Superb Owl sat in front of his TV.
The more he ate, the more touchdowns he'd see.
The more he drank, the better did his team.
Let's all share Superb Owl's superb scheme!

The Comeback snapped the ball
and looked desperately for somebody open--

I stood in the endzone
franticallywaving my
handsjumping
sporadicallyyy

HEY! I'M OPEN!!!

With an eye-roll hardly concealed
within a muddy helmet,
he begrudgingly tossed me the ball--

The buzzer sounded
and the fourth quarter ended
just as the ball was in my sweaty clutch--

But the visiting team had already clapped
each other on the backs and
my team waited for me in the
locker room
smelly and defeated.

Alas, I was the most distressed,
standing on the field alone
with the winning boon
a moment
                                 too late.

I. '88 dakota

mondays still ****. granted i don't get up at the crack of dawn no more but around noon i always feel the need to leave the rest of the day behind me and take the big red monster out and go to the beach and contemplate my life for hours, so i'll reach into my tattered 35 year old prada bag for a lanyard that says "nirvana" on it (like the band, not the stage of buddhism), but then i remember that gas guzzler and i got 337 miles between us, no more, no less.

II. whidbey

on wednesdays i feel like i've shifted into an alternate universe where there are things other than evergreen trees and dirt roads, where the view when i look out the window is an interstate and dagger-like icicles that are as tall as me. maybe it started when they took down the texaco star in freeland and maybe it started the day i left, but i'm not sure if i can remember what home feels like anymore.

III. you*

i still miss you on thursdays, sometimes saturdays. i know, i thought i woulda found someone better by now too till i realized that i'd been giving myself false hope this entire time. no one will ever be you. no one's teeth will curve the same way. no one will ever love the home teams as much as you. no one will ever smile as hard when i give them my last kit-kat in a strip mall parking lot at sunset. they drink to dak prescott and spit wintergreen griz more than you ever did. i thought i would find someone better until i walked into the coldest part of heaven with some crinkled twenty dollar bills and a carharrt jacket.

*-z. vega

The Day...
...huff, huff, ...huff
breathe
Not one but many,
downed
twenty-two a numbered set
Push!
break, reset, align...
frost, huff,
Great God of Light reveals our Glory!
breathing...breathing
Field of pain, torn, exhausted,
sweat, rain, mist, colder
as grass-stained; the warrior's drobe.

Situate,
whistle! -stop!
Realign,
Randint, paired, matched to offset...
feign, move
'Eleven-by-Eleven,' storied beget
tension

Forty-Five!
Eighteen!
Okemah!

Rush...

In the fields herds collide,
as Chaos, Eros, Geron, Adonai,
War portends a losing side?
The cheering throngs cast coronae...

Eleven steers to sacrifice,
go they do to God.
The ritual structure to suffice,
Violent nature absorbed by sod.

BULL

Typical male banter of which you think you are exempt-  but you are not.

Like the chick on the couch who plays the dumb blond, you are part of the culture.

Like an unnoticed concussion, you stain our brains with blackened thoughts of ideal bodies and insecurities.

You reek of stale laughter and wasted physique as you try to preserve your **** strap membership card with failing qualifications.

Since your hot wives have stretch marks and wrinkles around their forced smiles you play your fantasy league ; padding your stats with disingenuous gestures of matrimony.

With a stiff spine, we humor your talents the way your mother did- her icy tailbone under Friday night lights and forgiving disposition for missed curfews.
  
You draw from those years like a cactus in the rainforest.
  - soft soil - lacking roots and obviously out of place.

From above- you are an anomaly among the vines, masking your Cialis induced shaft by standing among real wood.

I hope you get cut down soon, all of you - turned into something better - like paper or a changing table for the sons we will raise to be disqualified from your clubs.

Another gladiator fell
Watering the field in blood.
His head was sheathed,
He never cut through the net
That descended from the stands.
The iron-****** trident
Brought thumbs up from the spectators
Indulging in the beer and nuts.
There are always some to be sacrificed
To placate the mob in the colosseum
Beneath the night lights on Mondays,
When Coke is the drink of victors,
And jerseys are sold to the trainees
Who now put on their spikes.
These are ours
Running headlong into the arena.

A dropped ball on the goal line
A tackle missed down field
It's amazing how a football game
Can make a man's mind yield

We come to tears when our teams lose
Even worse when our team wins
It's when we show all our emotions
It's when we break the MANLY SINS

But our girlfriend gets real angry
When we don't utter a word
When they want to talk of feelings
It's a word we've never heard
We're MEN and **** proud of it
We show support for MANLY things
Like football games and racing cars
Not relationshippy things

We wear our hearts upon our sleeve
When the two minute gun has sounded
When the game has come to overtime
When the last corner has rounded

We sit upon our seats edge
Nothing can break us from this trance
Not even when our **** girl
Comes and does a naked dance

But our girlfriend gets real angry
When we don't utter a word
When they want to talk of feelings
It's a word we've never heard
We're MEN and **** proud of it
We show support for MANLY things
Like football games and racing cars
Not relationshippy things

We cry when our dog passes
We get upset when things go wrong
But we'll never show emotion
To a ****** Adele song

We aren't built to be emotive
At least not when women want us to
I'll tell you more about emotion
When the football season's through