The Broadcast Crew I Grew up with

 

Jonathan S Baker

 

Jonathan S Baker

  · 

In October there is no greater crime

Than to write a poem that does not rhyme

Poets get angry when you mention poetry jail

Because they know their royalties will not cover the bail

All reactions:

25You and 24 others

Today Poem

 

For Gwyn

 

My granddaughter came to visit

While I was away at “work.”

She walked back to the playroom

To see if Bampy was there,

Silent, looking, picking up

A toy box to see if

I was under it, hiding.

She went to the kitchen where

She opened the Sam’s Club case

Of potato chips, peering

Inside, her three-year old brain

Believing I might just be

In the slightest of places.

That I might jump out and roar

Like a dinosaur—I was

Gone with friends to read stories,

But she “knew” something that we

Had long ago forgotten.

Friday Poem

 

 

 

He walked past the houses

Of people who had made it

In this world, and he hated them

With the concentrated hate

Of all his years, with the hate

He held for a third base coach

Who waved him home so that

The catcher was waiting for him

And they sent him down, no

Wheels, the report read, the

Story he said he’d never tell

He walked through the busy town

With his head down and he knew

He could kill them if he had to—

He could surprise them in their

Backyards next to sizzling gas grills

Standing in lines outside football fields

Drinking IPAs discussing what angle

To hit with their irons; he moved

With the madness only he could feel

Till even to him it didn’t seem real.

popcorn ceiling poem

 

We lived in a house with popcorn ceilings

 

 

I had no patience for the dog who would not

Stay in the lot seventy-five-yards downhill

Behind the house next to a polluted creek.

She broke her teeth chewing chain link fence.

At one time I ran electric wire along the lot.

She still got out, and the neighbors had a pool

That they refused to put a fence around.

No way for a dog to get out if she fell in.

So I took my dog and had her put to sleep.

We built a fence around the back of the house,

Bought another dog I named Dizzy Dean Kerouac.

She would watch baseball games with me

In the basement den till she went blind,

Purple-eyed, and died of cancer

At age five. The neighbors’ basset hounds

Died of cancer as well, living along that creek.

Goddamn good thing we got too big and good

And moved away where we could mistreat

Some more pets and raise our kids

Without cancer creeping in a creek bed.

About that time, I bought a pair of striped

Sweat pants like the Globetrotters

And became a distance runner.

And I was only halfway through

With whatever it was

That made me write it all down.

 

Tuesday Pome

 

Best of Times

 

It was the evening that three smart young men

On Jeopardy first didn’t know Thomas Wolfe,

Then Bob Dylan that I began to question the

Theory of relativity, as each of them stroked

Their goatees and peered through round glasses,

Failing to thumb their buzzers, not tense, because

They could see categories on Netflix and Hulu,

And I sensed that most of their lives had been

Lived in the current century, hustling smart phones

In search of clever ring tones, drinking craft beers,

Penning text messages, eighty years since Tom

Drank from a flask with a sweaty sick passenger

Crossing the Puget Sound, soon so dead that

Like Nashville Skyline Dylan, he’d be forgotten

As Studebakers, phone booths, or castor oil.

Saw this guy at L-R College during the unfortunate year I spent there---Hunter Thompson's running buddy

 

Hart Crane Poem

 

This Hart Crane documentary

 

Was made thirty years after his suicide,

When the principals, mostly writers

Were late in life, and yet, his impact

On them seemed fresh as they faced

The camera, describing him, first as

An exuberant young man who loved

Music and dancing, and taking all night.

Their 1950s’ takes on his queerness,

The power of his lyricism, then

The descent into drink—it’s a great

Show in which the subject never talks,

And then there’s Peggy Cowley

Holding a half-burned cigarette

In fingers browned from the task

And telling about the last night

On the ship, how they’d brought

Hart back to his quarters, nailed

The door shut to protect his

Drunken self from himself.

She smoked and told the tale

She’d told a thousand times.

The camera blinks and a new

Cigarette appears in her fingers.

And in her eyes, her wrinkled face,

One could see the ravaging

He’d done to his fiancée.

BCE

 

Before the Common Era

 

Back when the continents 

looked like dinosaur bones

lying next to swollen oceans.

When fossil fuel walked the earth

In search of now extinct plants,

The aliens arrived in vehicles

Shaped like vape cylinders,

Wandering outside

And looking up

Like heads on sticks

And measured everything

With electric eye stalks

And curved extended claws.

They were scientists

And soldiers back home.

They were restless travelers

Pragmatic gamblers

Hopeful romantics.

They were sometimes sad

Because they understood time.

And their blue-flamed leaving

Ignited a lengthy ice age,

The beginning of next things.

The report they transmitted

If it could be translated

Said they would likely return.

They had more wait in them

Than your average alien life form,

And they would not grow hungry

For a hundred million years.

 

Williams and Pesky along with Orville Campbell at Navy Flight School, Chapel Hill NC

 

Monday Night Poem

 

Lately an alarming number of friends

And friends from way back have been

Crossing over, and I have to think about

Their lives and what we may have meant

To each other, so I am in the death era

Of my life which precedes the acceptance

Of the same—I am old enough to reach

These days, but I sure don’t feel it—many

Of my friends who were killing themselves

Are not anymore, a consolation, a hedge

Against the imminent—I joined them

Several years ago, hesitantly—I can’t run

And I don’t dance, but I keep moving,

And I say the words I’ve always said

To myself—stay positive, read your weight,

Speak your truth and don’t stay up late.

KV Poem

 

For KV

 

If we are all unstuck in time,

Then why are we still here

Looking at another sunset

With our binocular brains.

 

Most days I can only think

In miles of time,

The carpenter’s unspooling

Measuring tape.

 

And when we come

Back together,

I can see those miles

Like sagging muscles.

 

The blade is dull.

The song is sad.

The light gives way.

We cannot stay.

Baseball Poem

 

No Synonym for Catcher

 

He was our catcher, ten years old,

No bigger than a third grader.

His chest protector reached the ground

And he moved into odd positions

To frame the target, knees on the ground,

Or turned a little sideways

Opening and closing the mitt

Sometimes waiting till the last minute

To bring it out in front.

Our ace pitcher didn’t care.

His minor league pitcher daddy

Had taught him to hit spots

With a blazing fastball,

He was six feet tall,

A tremendous curve

He could throw in any count

And the second half of the season

The first knuckleball we had seen.

They had no signals.

The catcher could snag anything

And threw from a crouch like a man.

He had black hair and dark skin.

His people were from Indian country,

And he swam every day in the summer.

And he talked the trash you’d expect

From the son of raging alcoholics.

The little guy had a husky voice

And he chattered non-stop at the hitters.

He’d broken a tooth on the diving board

And had a replacement that he could

Pop out with his tongue

And he would do it on a big pitch

When the batter looked back

Or down at him and he smiled

That charismatic smile that

Would one day win all the women

In the offices on his sales route

And no one would have guessed

That he was already damaged then,

That there was a pitch coming

That he could not catch.a