By Bob Englehart
(based on a true story)


Ben Hogan was the strongest man.
The game had ever seen,
The purest golfer in the world,
Who’d ever graced a green.

He had one dream and only one:
To play a perfect round,
Eighteen glorious holes-in-one
Before he’s in the ground.

One day a wealthy patron,
The richest man in town,
Said “Ben, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,
If you play that perfect round.

I’ll give you a million dollars,
More than fifty grand a stroke.
If you can do what no man’s done.”
Said Ben “Is this a joke?”

“Let’s do it now” the man said.
“Lets have a little fun.”
“OK”, said Ben.  “I’ll get my clubs.”
And they walked to number one.

He put his ball down on the tee,
The turf was Kentucky Blue.
He squared his body to the plane,
And swooped his follow-through.

Oh, he started on the first one,
And heaved his mighty whack!
It rolled onto the high side
And dribbled in the back.

The next one was a dogleg,
He waved the crowd away,
The gallery was silent now,
The trees began to sway.

A little breeze had risen up,
He put his club back in,
And took out something with less loft
And a little more backspin.

He hit it with a wallop!
It carved into the wind,
It chose a path below the wrath
And bounced and rolled.  It’s in.

The third one was a downhill,
With water on the left,
A line of trees behind the stream
And sand traps hard and wet.

Ol’ Ben let go a low one,
It swallowed up the air,
And blew right through an apple tree,
A peach tree and a pear.

That ball had so much on it,
Though it hardly did rise up,
It scattered rocks and leaves and dust
‘Til it rolled into the cup.

Its cover had unraveled,
Ben bent to lift it out.
He gave it to his caddy
Who gave a mighty shout.

Number four and five the same,
Perfection every shot,
Six through nine were ones apiece.
He was thirsty now and hot.

Number ten, the toughest hole
The golf course had on tap,
A double-dogleg, raised up green,
And a bunker called The Trap.

The Trap was a crater in the ground,
With a rope to climb on down,
And a flashlight on the bottom sand,
By a skull some golfer’d found.

Ol’ Ben just squinted skyward,
And lifted up his chin,
“I want to try to make this shot
Before the darkness settles in.”

He came down through that golf ball,
With a smile of purest pleasure,
And it headed for The Trap at speeds
Impossible to measure.

It dipped into the chasm,
And headed for the gloom,
It plunged down deep in the abyss
‘Til it hadn’t any room.

It hit the skull like a bullet,
Some bone was blown clean off,
Out the top of the Trap it flew
And lined up with the moss.

It rolled two hundred yards or so,
And headed for the cup,
And dropped in with a gentle plop
With its logo facing up.

Eleven, twelve and thirteen,
Were handled much the same,
You couldn’t hold a candle to him,
When Ben was on his game.

The next four holes were all alike,
The ones that came before,
All holes-in-one were on his card,
No twos were on his score.

He strolled up to the eighteenth tee,
His heart was beating loud.
He put his fingers to his lips,
And quieted the crowed.

The last one was a short one,
A straight-ahead par three
There were no hazards anywhere,
No sand trap, pond or tree.

“This should be a snap, ol’ sport”
The patron said as he looked.
He reached into his pocket,
And got out his checkbook.

Ben hit the ball without a tee,
A divot flopped in front,
The ball flew forward to the rough
Like a major-leaguers’ bunt.

It straightened out and bounded for
The cup which was dead ahead,
His target clearly right on line,
“Draino,” the patron said.

But deep inside that little hole,
In the center of the green,
A bug was singing courtship songs
That filled the round ravine.

And on the edge…above him,
His girl bug sat and giggled,
And fluttered sixteen eyelids
Her antennae bobbed and jiggled.

The ball snuck up behind her,
It didn’t see her charms,
And it knocked her off the slippery edge
Right into her boy bug’s arms.

The ball stopped when it hit her.
It wouldn’t moved an inch.
The patron’s eyes popped real wide,
Ben Hogan didn’t flinch.

Ben couldn’t know the truth of it,
He only knew he failed.
He took it all upon himself,
And stomped the ground and wailed.

Other dreams would have to wait.
He couldn’t rest until
He turned around and headed back
To the first tee on the hill.

They say his ghost’s still out there
And on moonlit nights you’ll hear
The pounding of his irons
Against the dimpled sphere.

Pump  jacks, mesquites  and  telephone  poles
ice  rattles  in  my  cup , in  the  center  console  
horn toads, ground  squirrels, coveys of  quail  
road  runner , coyotes  and  foxes  on  the  trail  

All  alone  out  on  the  road  
backroads is  where  I  roam  
white  stripes, a  dotted  line  
driving  in  the  warm  sunshine  

Window  down , the  wind  blows  in  
old  school  tunes  rock  from  backspin
passing  trucks  in  the  oil  field  
now  in  front  a  clear  windshield

Texas  border, not  far  away
switch  to  country, let  it  play
Merle  haggard  sings, as  antelopes  graze
in  the  field, a tractor cuts  hay

A lynx crosses the road in front of me
carrying a rabbit, caught something to eat
a rare sight indeed, but you never know
what you'll see on the back roads

(Intro)
…two missed calls in the middle of the night and it
got me thinking what could have been of my night.

Backspin

In kitchen eating dinner
She came in with a thought to make dinner.
Being in the same room with her
It would have been awkward not to acknowledge her.  
So I strung up words, which caught her some kind of way
pulling her my way

Now she sat beside me as I ate dinner
We talked about family, friends and her potential dinner.
That was when she told me she got a midterm the next day
and wouldn’t be making dinner.
Her plan was to go study with friends and buy some quick dinner.

Now it got me thinking
If her plan was to do quick dinner, why the trip to the kitchen for dinner?
Anyhow, moving on

(Outro)
Time went by, people came and went
But there we were talking over dinner.
She proceed to ask about tattoo and if I got some
I told her I couldn't do the pain and the cost.
She told me she got some ink on her
I offered to see after she got back from studying.
In which she said she would call me

She called twice in the night as I slept wondering if she would call.
Walking up to see …(Intro)

I speak on conscious thoughts, not consciousness,
Because life was hard knock; now common sense,

I speak on love because its understanding was something I sought,
This information came easy to me,
Over time it became apparent as to what reality would be if the state of now was commonly perceived,

I love you, you loved me,
Your understanding of time created separation,
I see me, you see me,
This space is defined by our declaration,
When I accept, the cause is respect,
So this affect is without hesitation,
Your legislation leads to interrogation; your moral implementations is the cause of devastation,
Eradication defines identification if obligations exist in observation;
If there’s fragmentation within the foundation, the revelation is far from liberation,
I’m saying, if one is all and it is all you see,
What’s perceived is constituted by classification,
Because it’s the only way we can correlate comprehension and what is experienced throughout the human civilization,
This is why we have generations and translation,
We are all experiencing the same thing,
However our education on what is, is hindering our flow of communication;
We’re reading the same book, on different pages, and expressing information in one sided conversations,
This is the explanation in why interpretations are resulting in situations with more confrontation than consideration,
It is acceptance; appreciation that gives us salvation, not justification,
It is what leads us to cultivation and congregation,
I do not speak of propagation, I speak of cooperation,
If there’s optimization in socialization,
It’s inevitable that this cause result in a happy nation,

Patience…

This time will come,
Until then I’ll remain over here,
I can not indulge in the contamination of fear,

Friends disconnected,
Reality says we drift paths,
Life so fast, so furious,
Hoping I don’t miss that,
There’s two options daily,
Equations making zigzags,
Hallux playing ticktack,
Ballots; playing witchcraft,
If I’m shooting for life, Kit-Kat won’t bring me a second if my weapon got a kickback,
To dads too furious; I’m thinking which half?
Full of anger or full of energy?
Is the outcome an act of violence or intensity?
Children are the byproduct of our unconscious thoughts and actions,
We speak of density to serenity;
It’s the backspin of choice that equated to offspring seeking the experience of amenity,
We see enemies and search for entities,
When will we see identity in search of remedies, after asking the question;
“How do I discover the inner me?”

My home was this world,
As a kid I felt invited,
Bodies around me aged and became divided,
Mental wars do to external environments,
I see the selling of souls like,
Individuality must go; do to inherited obligations the trading of an expression became a requirement,
If this is the only manuscript on living; I ain’t buying it,
Call me defiant man, I personally don’t share desire in expression confinement,


I live life according to my design;
Refinement,
I live life supporting those who are consciously seeking alignment,
I live life exporting the distortions accumulated through time, cause be of time spent ,
I live life rewarding my mind,
That’s excitement,
I am an advocate; I speak of conscious thoughts,
Call it enlightenment.

I have written the perfection of
now on a napkin
backspin

The listening done to art
arising in coarseness
*******

Under these lights
moving the curtains
bulletin

see see see the taste
coursing through
nothin'

i and you correspond
with a sound
set in

this cool night i am afright
of October and its darkness
of which I am