Poems Round 3

Tonight’s first poem a happy poem that isn’t funny—unusual for me, right?  I wrote this one back before MLB Opening Day in honour of the start of summer.  It discusses my loves of baseball and roller coasters—two things that only come with summer.

Pink's Hot Dogs and Foul Balls

I love the spring weather, though I much prefer the summer activities

Because summer means two things: baseball games and roller coasters

Which are, quite easily, two of my favourite things

There is nothing better than hopping in the car and cruising down the road with my best friend by my side,

Headed north--either to Cleveland or Sandusky

We got the windows rolled down and the music cranked loud--most likely the Avett Brothers or some Kid Cudi

And whether it's that two-lane State Route 4 or the I-71 freeway, it is my favourite place to drive,

Save for all those annoying one-way streets and weird-ass intersections in Marion,

There are few things more spectacular than the sight of the steel frames on the horizon,

As you drive across the thin causeway with the gentle waves on either side

And the closer you get, the louder the roar of screams and heavy engines grows--

The peak of Mount St. Helens poking through the clouds as you ascend from SeaTac

And the fierce English Channel waves crashing on the Dutch coast as you descend into Schipol

Are just a couple which I can recall from recent memory

But nothing, absolutely nothing, matches the boner-inducing, goose-bump causing, panic-stricken, sweat-pouring adrenaline

From being in that first row as you drop 95-degrees at 70-miles per hour

And then quickly run back to the start of the line so you can do it all over again,

Taking just a short break to chow down on that natural-casing hot dog piled high with cole slaw--

The perfect amount of cool to counteract the snap and pop of the dog

It's the perfect treat for a day filled with thrills and screams.

There are few things more spectacular than the sight of NOT seeing Lebron's face hanging on the side of a building as you exit I-90 onto Ontario St

But that dying city doesn't that backstabber so long as the Chief Wahoo is still around--

That team is the reason why I'm in Cleveland and why I wouldn't mind calling it my second home

Because you'll find me sitting on that first base line more often than you won't

Me and my best friend sitting in the sun, trying to avoid treacherous sunburn, just behind that visiting team's dugout

The bat makes contact with the ball, so close you can hear the crack

And the ball goes soaring with three runners on the bags--a walk-off grand slam to end the night

The fireworks erupt from behind the scoreboard, illuminating the light-polluted city sky

The game is over and all the fans pour onto the streets, but I'm fine just staying here at the ballpark,

Where I feel some of the most joy and have some of my best days.

This next one is a little morbid, but a good kind of morbid.  Before you go into a big huff about it being angsty teen poetry, it’s not.  It’s a poem written from the perspective of a character in my rom-com novel (in progress), Birds.  The character hates his life as a big shot exec who merely inherited the job from his dad and wishes to pursue a career as a writer, having written almost his entire life, but is too afraid to take the plunge.  This was written before I decided to capitalize things in my poetry.

the sacrificial rite

have you ever seen a broken heart?

have you ever seen an aztec priest

take his knife and plant it square in the middle of his victim's chest

and cut through the flesh, tearing and ripping it from the bone,

cracking the sternum and opening the rib cage

and there it sets: a still beating heart,

that's my heart.

it's still beating.

can you hear it?

thump. thump. thump. thump.

THUMP.

there's a look of anguish on my face.

and the priest reashes in with his aged and bloody hand

and in one swift tug removes the organ from my chest cavity;

he turns to the crowd at the bottom of the temple

and displays his still beating prize, trying to pump blood into the air.

he is met with a glorious uproar in unison and much applause

and a look of relief comes over my face.

This last one is another silly one (kind of).  It’s about one of my favourite professors at OWU and all the crazy things he did.

David Walker, Crazy Son of a Bitch

Do you remember when you took us on that field trip to the hood?

Actually, it was more than once

Here we were, a big group of rich white kids--

rich white kids from a posh, white-ass, Methodist private liberal arts college,

cruisin' down Mount Vernon Avenue in a white 8-passenger minivan adorned with a giant crimson logo

I would be lying if I said we didn't get a few stares from the local residents

Or, remember that time in Cinci when we were stopped by the cops?

"This isn't a good place to be walking with a large group of kids with expensive phones and cameras,"

is what that patrolling officer said, but we continued

and, we somehow made it out of that dilapidated concrete jungle unscathed

There were, however, those other times not quite so good:

the crack sales at the corner shop, the gang vigil in the historic projects,

oh and that time the sun started to go down in Bronzeville and we were still ages from the bus

or admiring all the foreclosure signs in Franklinton

but at least you cut the part where we'd end up on Morse Road after 6pm

And let us not forget the time at Cafe Bella when you pulled out that big ass bottle of red wine and drank all but a few glasses.