Baseball Pome Process

 Process

“What is your writing process? The workshop attendee asked.

 

The baseball poet is at double play depth

Waiting for a hard bouncing grounder,

Allowing the grinding early season game

To come to him; there is a real game

On the cable: two teams he cares little about.

The Pirates are desperately bad, maybe

The best stadium, maybe the worst team,

Everything wrong with America’s Pastime.

The Reds are promising, but not quite there.

Watchable young players, at least one star.

The baseball poet wants to visit their park,

Like Pittsburgh, a blue collar river town.

He remembers Mazeroski, Stargell, Clemente,

“We are family,” The Big Red Machine

Bench, Perez, torpedo sliding Pete Rose.

Before the river of money flowed to LA,

NY, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco.

The baseball poet waits with his heels

On the outfield grass, thinks of how to track

A popup, falling from darkness to light.

The Pirates stadium is lightly peppered

With hardcore fans. In a TV close up,

Their new manager studies his scorecard

As if he might find an answer there.

The baseball poet knows that nothing

Might happen, but he’s got to be there

If it does.

Souvenirs

 Souvenirs 

 

Sunday mornings I travel  

Sometimes in contemplative 

Silence, east on the soulless  

Pavement of old Highway 70, 

Past Lowman’s Motor Court, 

Where mopeds and beater cars 

Gather like the last true unbelievers, 

Then by the Angus Steakhouse,  

Trumper muraled, empty, defeated; 

Strip clubs, used car lots, 

Battery King, 

Whomsover Church, 

Fishing stores, tire stores, 

The orange and pink outlined 

Vape shop, shocking against 

The spread of darkness. 

Six am, the gritty world 

Asleep, passed out. 

And I, a willing ghost, 

Headed to see my brother, 

On a mission of love.

Church Dream Pome

 I dream about the old church

Gone since the late-eighties,

The cost of demolition

Doubled because of asbestos

Ghosts that lived there swept clear

Filled in by bulldozer blades

Cemetery expanded

Death moving in slow rectangles

Rowing clean and straight

A green place I could walk and

Every name a face I knew

The way I know who sat in

What row what women wore hats

I see them walking up front

To receive Holy Communion

The ushers counting them off

In twelves like the apostles

How they stood humbly their hands

Held in the way they were taught

To hold the holy shot glass

To dissolve the tasteless wafer

On their already dry tongues.

I dream of it lately not

The horror of all churches

Their sleepy meanness coiling

As the moon forgets to kill

The night wolves and their curses,

The way the goose walks over

My grave. 

Poet Poem

 First the poet complained

About poems that have birds in them;

His collection contained twenty or so

Such poems, but this did not bother me.

I didn’t want to like him,

But he was good,

The kind of good that cannot be denied,

Unless you’re too stupid to see it,

Which is the most common situation,

And the biggest reason

That being good doesn’t matter.

The fact that he was or is good

Is or was what bothered me.

How dare someone command words

In such a way as to drive them

Before him like a pretty cattle drive.

The pentameter of their dumb hooves.

In his picture he has a pony tail.

I’ll bet this shit came to him

Like Coleridge or Disney

In a coke dream.

I admit that he is good,

Damned good,

But he’s probably

Just another rat.

Poetry Poem

 Accounting

It was a full-fledged

Poetry tour.

We’d sell two books

And drink $100

Worth of beer.

2025 poem

 Emerald CIty

Last night I watched The Wizard of Oz
and found myself remembering
the communion wafer melting on my tongue—
that thin shield of belief
I once imagined wrapped around me,
protecting us from flying monkeys
and furious, green-skinned witches.

How that Styrofoam sliver of God,
light as a snowflake,
felt like more than a symbol—
back then,
it was all the magic
we thought we needed.

This is pretty good for the nostalgic ones of us The Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1hgI2WtUCM