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

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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