"dugout" poems
Play Ball (Softball)
By Joeysguy
My daughters use to play softball
I wish I could have been to them all
Since my daughters don’t play anymore
I don’t have a team to cheer for
I do watch some games on the TV
The girls have lots of great energy
When the girls are in the dugout
You can hear them cheer and shout
You can hear them chant and scream
To win a world series starts as a dream
For one team to lose comes sorrow
And they may not have a game tomorrow
I’ve seen many girls being sad
I can’t recall any of them getting mad
Lots of girls playing softball
Good luck to them all
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 10:34 PM UTC
You have played softball for years
You know the rules
You only get three strikes
4 strikes?
What a generous umpire
Take a seat in the dugout
You've struck out
There is no doubt
Batter up?
Jan 14, 2011
Jan 14, 2011 at 5:32 PM UTC
There's a tiny park a short walk from here
where no one ever goes.
Though it's always abandoned,
I like to walk there when it snows
'cuz it seems like
a relative.
Don't complain to me, my friend
if your face is feeling raw;
It gets cold here in Montana,
and December nights get long.
and they have not
failed me yet.
So salt your frigid frown
and lay down bets on warmer times
in five more months, the thaw will come
and we just might quit rolling snake eyes.
Icy air is not your enemy
and neither are this small city
or I.
The same park, it has a baseball field,
leaf-covered, looking old
the dugout's still in good repair,
but the basepaths overgrown
remind me of,
A New Year's alone
Remember one warm night when we thought
we were in the mood
to walk to the convenience store
for some box wine and some food?
we played cards,
locked in my room...
Now we're crying California tears
from laughing all night long.
And you don't really hate Montana,
you're just doing Winter wrong.
So lay your anger down
and hedge your bets 'til nicer days
don't stay inside, 'cuz you don't have to.
Graft my smile over your grimace,
this dull white-out's not the end for us
and neither is the bitter cold
outside.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 4:38 PM UTC
Aloft upon some distant shore
The seabird sets her wings to soar
The salt sea tang of crested breeze
Or howling gale of winters freeze,
Through oceans, mountainous or not
Or sea Sargasso flat and hot,
In dancing wavelets sparkling clear
Where hunted mackerel school in fear,
Where natives in their dugout boats
Caste out their nets and balsa floats,
That tiny bird will soar adrift
Negotiating each wind shift.
One wonders how a thing so small
Can fly against the wind at all;
But sweep she does and plunge and veer
In gracious symmetry to steer
Across the oceans vastness too,
To land right there, right next to you.
In squawking lightness, dancing swings
Sea bird alights ….and folds her wings.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
8th. December 2007
Feb 2, 2010
Feb 2, 2010 at 10:49 PM UTC
Today, somebody's words awoke the ashes of my long dead heart
I know that was much more than mere fictional ink spilling out of a creative mind
I forgot how that felt, years back, you know, emotions
it reminded me of the excuses I gave to myself
for running away from relationships
for choosing to live alone
for not meeting my friends often
for not talking to my family for over a minute
for deciding I am simply not meant for marriage
and certainly not for ever having kids
their hurt, hurt me
and it felt like more than I could take
so I chose unattachedness over fragility
somehow, that strategy doesn't forge too well here
I am too seized by words to even try to be nonchalant towards my current better half
towards strangers over family
the rust has been removed from over my bemired emotions
pragmatism has been thrown to the dugout
those words have left my haven purged
and I am left befuddled, meditating over a paradox
They aren’t my carks, yet, I can't stop feeling them.
Aug 5, 2012
Aug 5, 2012 at 10:14 AM UTC
Quiet are the fields
with ghosts
from pennants past
the aces
and cutters
set idly away
from the maple
spread fall
soft sounds
of Sunday
(chilling on the boneyard)
telling tales of
validated stars
and wheel house legends
the rally cap sluggers
with mahogany eyes
Mustard colors
in floating mists
give a hallowed glow
to sublime skies
scattered walkers
trip to the hole
their spit buckets
and spigots
pressed loosely into
pure life form
bikers and loners
and curious coffee goers
mill about the horn
whispering numbers
from an old
Keelman heaving
Alley lookers
and Mendoza lines
screachers, bleachers
from years gone by
dancing fingers
and cracks at the bat
moonshots
(from the big time Timmy Jim)
the 9th inning gunner
with sinker
and slider
and imposing
brush back ballz
the game day citizen
and dugout warrior
who lit it all up
in Rockwell fame
Jan 18, 2017
Jan 18, 2017 at 11:28 PM UTC
She is a girl
She has two sisters, a dog
And a pair of worn-out headphones in her pocket
She is fifteen
She plays violin in the school orchestra
And sings duets in the sun
She is left-handed
She’s also pansexual
(Just thought you should know)
<><><>
She is a girl
(A different girl, mind you)
She has bright hair and dark eyes
And a sky of freckles spanning her body
She is a netball player
She listens to everything that’s said
And laughs at everything in response
She is an Aquarius
Her girlfriend is an Virgo
(Is this what they call diversity?)
<><><>
He is a boy
He is on the males’ baseball team
And recites prophetical speeches in the dugout
He is an early riser
He likes old-fashioned comedy movies
And his favourite colour is either orange or black
He is graduating next year
He’ll finally get to ask his school’s star pitcher to prom
(Finally is the right word)
<><><>
‘She’ is a boy
(A different boy, mind you)
‘She’ lives in the countryside
And travels 2 hours to campus each morning
‘She’ is a realist
‘She’ studies human relations
And has wanted to visit Rome since 'she' was eight
‘She’ is a part-time barista
‘She’ prefers the pronoun ‘he’
(No big deal if you forget though)
<><><>
They are people
They have people they love
And people who love them
They are people
They may have changed to you
And yet they haven’t changed to themselves
They are people
They are still people
<><><>
(Just thought you should know)
<><><>
Nov 4, 2016
Nov 4, 2016 at 9:33 AM UTC
You were in the mezzanine
By the dugout of your favorite team
And when you tore your dress
They got it on the mega screen
Well, even the next day
After the attention went away
Your picture found its way
Into a girly magazine
Well, you did your walk of shame
And it became your name
But at least you got your 15 minutes
Of televison fame
On that summer day
Where your crotch was on display
And bad luck for the home team
Cause no one could watch the game
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 9:41 AM UTC
Countless poppies now grow
Where men had once stood,
Or had peered from a dugout,
Or had hidden in a wood,
Where bullets had hailed and
Young lives were squandered,
As poisoned gas smothered
And big guns thundered,
Those in charge must have surely
Questioned and pondered.
Poppies grow in peace now,
Gunfire no longer heard,
Let this be the case forever
For PEACE - is the golden word.
Jul 9, 2021
Jul 9, 2021 at 1:18 AM UTC
The cold dash in October
could break your ankle,
on some twig strewn iced river,
gusted by this uneasy Bravado.
And through this
we form a common bond
the strewn and promiser will led their merry dance.
It is better to shut your eyes and see again
and undream.
So rollick in the dew,
the resplendent Samphires will regrow.
For were we not pre destined
to edge towards the tidal marshes
and with dugout boats
voyage through the satisfied.
Tempus fugit awaits
to enrapture our intricacies.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 4:57 PM UTC
Sweet wind that brings me desert dust and ashes
Or salty mist as blood on burning lips
Sweet wind that carries smells of roads and mountains
And rocks, and sands, and rusty wires, and tires,
And bullet-pierced sandbags, mines, and empty tins
And holy thorns that grow through them
And hot, bleak sky high over them
And dry, cracked clay embracing them
Sweet wind that brings me memories of war
Wind softly stroking dusty oleanders
And rushing all along the endless road
Wind –
Now tell me, when the land so lolls in sleepy peace –
Kids playing, women chatting, lovers dreaming,
Men building houses, furnishing, arranging –
All more fragile than cobweb lace
That busy housewives sweep away on sleepless daybreak
Sweet wind, tell me why I
I try to fill my mind with buzz and humdrum
Of knowledge – words, and thoughts, and numbers,
-- to stifle the voice, the shadow haunting me –
The voice that whispers softly, sweetly killing
To wake me up – to find myself again –
To send me far away where is my home:
To prison, madhouse, hospital, dodjo,
Wet dugout, earthquake rubble, secret lab
Where I belong, where all like me are going –
But still in vain,
For happiness, my prison guard and mate
Me torturing,
And happiness, the evil sheikh of nightmares,
His long, thin legs me strangling, hanging down
My shoulders,
His mud-brown hands me stopping ears, and eyes, and mouth –
And me
Who wanders through my days as empty rooms
And endless corridors of giant fallout shelters
Where lonely steps reverberate in hollow hallways
And ruthless light
In which the shadow of my shadow
Me follows – counselor, and silent friend,
Unhurt by splinters of that broken magic mirror
That **** in air; may some benumb my heart
And let me play the game of words and numbers
That spells ETERNITY;
And let the sweet hashish of words and numbers
Make me forget;
Make me forgive, and live, and lie
That I believe the world of war will never come.
Nov 27, 2012
Nov 27, 2012 at 6:28 AM UTC
I felt the world rejecting me- quite literally.
I feel the stars and black stare racing towards me
Cold, icy, boiling space. Vertigo and G’s
Dazed and confused, love in a dugout
Static movement erupted by the oddman out
Electric dogs and burning books
For the man who leaves the party to do nothing
Or is it?
May 9, 2012
May 9, 2012 at 4:23 PM UTC
Of Baseball, Poetry and the Human Condition
~~
From “The Art of Fielding.” by Chad Harbach
"You loved it,” he writes of the game (baseball), “because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about the Human Condition.
The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not."
~~
and thus, the circling noose grows ever small,
binding the obvious and unblinding the oblivious
more than the mere, poetry in baseball, for both forms of art,
knowledge intuited from watching the catcher's body weave
this way and that, a dancer en pointe, arms raised in worship,
addressing the heavens with a body's broad brush strokes,
all to catch with concentrated skill, a lazy, towering popup,
climaxing oft with an exclamation point -
a perilous desperation leap
into the dugout encampment of the inimical opposition
yeah, yeah, sure, sure,
you knew that,
tho daring to verbalize same,
before the age of thirty,
presumed maturity,
was not an act of the sane of heart,
or the sound of mind with body melded
what you dared not admit was that the conditional principle,
was primal and not tangential, though perhaps,
some itinerant fathers foolishly mumbled incoherently
of life's linkages and motifs parallel
of
that desperate beauty, the ferric magnetic irony,
that our full access pass to envisioning the finery,
imaging the stuff of our own daily creation genesis,
whether concocting undisciplined disassembled parts,
called words,
into a singular line, a stanza that froze your lungs from
the boredom of the regularity of heaving and breathing,
was in no way different
than the curvature of the boy's arm
in desperation outstretched, seeking spectacular safety for
a well hit ball of cork into a worn leather mitten and thus
confirming his humanity to the watching tribal membership
and these momentary moments of momentousness,
will live forever until we die, judged of equal stature,
a soldiers stripes, ribbons of his theaters of service,
medals of the honor and the errors of his own
truthful, youthful and crucial
human condition
Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017 at 4:57 PM UTC
Why do we need to redeem ourselves?
To know one and to cherish one
To live thy life that we solely covet
No turning back, only now
Moles are blind and see no light
But they find their way
Carving mud and dust to get
To one’s itinerary
Paving their ways through filth
But they find their way
With warrens, dug in and dugout
And trusting their grit and snout
Working their way through lands
But they find their way
Through hard work with their two bare hands
Burrowing and Burrowing
Heroes and heroine
Harrowing and harrowing, but not like blind moles
Worry, why? Aren’t you much precious than them, darling?
With gift of sight, to see one’s light
Oct 24, 2017
Oct 24, 2017 at 1:44 PM UTC
I’ve been backstabbed
I’ve been backhanded
I’ve been backflipping money
I've been backtracking destiny
I’ve been backed into a corner
I’ve been brought back
I’ve been traveling backroads
I’ve been treated with the backlash
I’ve been left alone with no backups
•
They’ve told me to backdown
I’m back on the ground
Dugout deep in their backyard
But I learn from the backwards
See me now in my new backdrop
I’m working harder then ever, I can’t feel the backache
They want me to backup but my moves don’t backtrack
So they now pull out a gun out of their backpack
They’re here to take me out back
But this time I’m standing up, I now have a backbone
So I fire back
Sep 14, 2020
Sep 14, 2020 at 9:12 PM UTC
Earth's satellite-- bloated and hung.
And there you were out of sight.
An accidental prize tucked in the crevice of tomorrow.
A lethal burrow abundant with barbed avowals.
In a sick dugout flourishing with axiom; an infestation.
You were;
The space tucked in a dream.
The conductor.
The lout existing in the basement.
The brute in love with disdain.
Plucking circumflex arteries- clumsy, unskilled.
Your mouth is a watering can.
Vena cava, then the right atrium.
Body parts for guitar strings.
I unravel and you're amused.
The exercise of reason, the functioning of the intellect.
Silence always stings.
It feasts on the bone marrow.
In the cracks of the asphalt,
There you are again.
Like a thief.
The Viper.
The hurricane smile I believed in.
Use me up and hang me out to dry with all the other bankrupt *****
I'll still be dormant in the eye of your assault.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 7:21 PM UTC
on the day my sister was born,
my dad took me to a minor league baseball game.
i watched the pitcher as he chewed the
pitcher’s mound to shreds with the teeth
of his stride. the ball combed the air, taking with it debris from the kind of sad people
who show up to watch short-a ball
while somewhere, a little girl is
dragging out her claws and staking her
claim on the operating table.
my older brother littered the yard with
bottle caps. this stadium was his dream.
he would have slept in the unheated walls
for a chance to touch all 216 stitches
with two perfect hands.
the batters today are fooled by
a series of nasty changeups that
cough their hearts up. peanut
butter and jelly awaits them in the
dugout. a couple of halfhearted
diehards keep score on the back
of their wrists, the pen tying up
their veins. the pitcher authors
the whole game like that, a painful
rush.
i want to leave. the kind of
faultless art makes me sick. he
was born in uniform, certainly,
and glowing, his arm whipping
around from the womb and tossing
out any notion of normalcy his parents
may have held. nobody can touch him.
he never cut his feet on old
beer caps in a quest to touch
a patchwork god.
the next hitter becomes a runner
when his hands take his heart
around the block and come back
with a ball cutting the air, colliding
with a meteor that surely would have
destroyed the world. someday on a
faraway planet they will see that ball
bouncing through the stars, restless as
the man who drove it. that spot on the
atmosphere may never recover from its
brush with non-destiny.
nobody dreams in the minor leagues, not even
the batter-runner whose arms have just
propelled his team to a spot above
heaven. god will surely collapse them soon.
there is a girl somewhere, being bathed
by a stranger. she has ceased to be dead.
a miracle for certain.
Feb 7, 2011
Feb 7, 2011 at 1:51 PM UTC
I shoulda wore a beard
to be (not) myself.
I stand out,
looking dead to the neck,
sitting in the dugout and scanning the dusty field.
I keep my eye on the pitcher.
My heart is going tight;
tighter . . . too stiff to move. (Weakening.)
I let it get a butchering.
I shoulda got myself outta this.
I never saw such a disgusting joke as myself.
I ask to be a fisher, but He exclaims,
"Oh, old geezer, skinny and bearded,
calm down, ease up, and be quiet.
You've worn yourself to threads."
I belong in an old man's home.
I'm a helluva mess.
I'll ask if he found a **** good joke in me
when I head into The Tunnel.
I was broke in the head and paralyzed,
had rolled "unlucky", with an epidemic of "frightening and hair."
But he laughed,
"Quiet, fisher. You'll pay for your sobbing.
I'm only asking you to give the best you have in you."
I know; think of the future.
I will be in this a long time.
I came for more than the ride
and headed screaming into it.
I won't end this lying in a pool of my own blood.
Mar 26, 2012
Mar 26, 2012 at 10:03 PM UTC
there was once a brick hearth
and my skinned kneed,
wild flaxen haired,
innocent self would sit there
to feel the fire’s warmth radiating through the stones.
there were ghost stories told
on picnic tables at state parks where
the calloused barefeet of my childhood
struck the dusty ground as i ran towards
not away
when i followed vitreous streams
with frigid soaked clothes clinging to my skin
all the way to the river who now holds these memories
for me.
there was a sprawling old mimosa tree
whose diaphanous flowers would float
feathery petals
to decay on the ground.
How that tree must be a part of me somehow
from the scrapes my soft infantile skin
endured while trying to clamber up its branches
not for a moment tainting my insatiable appetite to explore.
there were steaming hot afternoon thunderstorms
a quotidian race home from the bowels
of the verdant green forest
dodging heavy raindrops
pregnant with the weight of coming years.
those years were the smell of fresh lighter wood
the acrid feel of smoke in the back of my throat
popsicles in the pool
and warm sun-kissed skin.
those times were blanket forts at sleep overs
the salt on sunflower seed shells
cracked in the dugout at softball games
they were the lilted drawl that curled comfortably
around eternal southern colloquialisms.
bike rides to get skittles and coke
at the gas station at the end of the street.
the wind in my hair as I careened down
what will always be known as
Thrill Hill
at some point my bike rusted
when was that?
the pool sat alone and unused
and evergreen forests became a passing image
in a dream
scraped knees turned to razor slices.
but my body will always carry the recollection.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 9:32 PM UTC
In the dugout
Bases are loaded
he's up to bat
he swings and it's
a line drive up third.
Then it's first base
second base
third base
and sliding into home.
Afterwards I am amazed
at the trash and litter that abounds
that humans can do this to a place
it astounds.
In my disgust I look up
there you are still glowing from
the play,
looking at me as if to say
your next.
We walk a while
we talk a while
I learn about the game
I need a chair
the dugouts there
An awkward pet
my ******* wet
he lays me back on the bench
he rubs me there
hasn't a care
of when or where i've been
just drops his pants
and starts the dance
of an innocents last chance.
Pushing the wall with his toes,
helps it to get where it goes good again
poking my eye with his nose
its over as awkward as it began
He goes in a rush
leaves me in a flush
wondering what it was all about
left all alone with sorrow
the soreness will be better tomorrow
I'll try not to pout
and in PE dress out
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 7:57 PM UTC
Do you still think about me
when your car hums
past the baseball field
and beats toward the twilight?
Can you hear my smile
when the sun is melting into your favorite
flavor of summertime sorbet?
-
I remember when
we used to summit the dugout
and watch the sky slow dance,
we held hands like our fingers
were sewn together,
and kissed in celebration
like we had reached
the peak of the world.
You taught me how to
write poems about love,
and my open chest cavity.
Since you left, I’ve been writing
about everything all at once.
About how the smoothness of your skin
brushes me awake in a bed in which I am alone,
how love tastes like jazz music
and fireball whiskey,
and about how pain leaves you gasping for air and
draws canyons under your eyes.
-
I don’t know how to forget
the palms of your hands
in my mom’s basement at 2 a.m.
or the sound of my heart as
I hung up the phone.
I don’t know how to forget
everything all at once.
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 2:10 PM UTC
Some people are born on third
and think they scored a triple
others are just happy to be single
I was born at home
and couldn't get on-base
I was caught looking
so I decided to take a walk
stealing to make it a double
but then I was forced out at third
because someone already lived there.
During this shutout
I look up at the scoreboard
which makes me want to score more
but the pitchers are warming up
and my destination is the dugout
praying for competent teammates
or extra innings
to carry me to another at-bat.
Jan 19, 2022
Jan 19, 2022 at 8:02 AM UTC
Of Baseball, Poetry and the Human Condition
~~
From “The Art of Fielding.” by Chad Harbach**
***"You loved it,” he writes of the game (baseball), “because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about the Human Condition.
The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not."**
~~
thus, the circle grows ever small,
binding the obvious and unblinding the oblivious
more than the mere, poetry in baseball, for both forms of art,
knowledge intuited from watching the catcher's body weave
this way and that, a dancer en pointe, arms raised in worship,
addressing the heavens with a body's broad brush strokes,
all to catch with concentrated skill, a lazy, towering popup,
climaxing oft with an exclamation point
a perilous desperation leap
into the dugout encampment of the inimical opposition
yeah, you knew that,
tho verbalizing same,
before the age of thirty,
presumed maturity,
was not an act of the sane of heart,
or the sound of mind and body melded
what you dared not admit was that the conditional principle,
was primal and not tangential, though perhaps,
some itinerant fathers foolishly mumbled incoherently
of a life linkage parallel motifs
of
that desperate beauty, the ferric magnetic irony,
that our full access pass to envisioning the finery,
imaging the stuff of our own daily creation genesis,
whether concocting undisciplined disassembled parts, words,
into a line, a stanza that froze your lungs from
the boredom of the regularity of heaving and breathing,
was in no way different
than the curvature of the boy's arm
in desperation outstretched, seeking spectacular safety for
a well hit ball of cork into a worn leather mitten and thus
confirming his humanity to the watching tribal membership
and these momentary moments of momentousness,
will live forever until we die, judged of equal stature,
a soldiers stripes, ribbons of his theaters of service,
medals of the honor and the errors of his own
human condition
Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017 at 5:02 PM UTC
I have only my soul to blame
On addled nights when my weary heart rattles and bangs
In its bone cage the thrumming beats
Terrified finches flailing in the wake of a gloved hand
And I am sold to the child clutching wrinkled wet bills
And sticky Christmas change
Who’ll forget to feed me by New Year’s Day
Small songs left unsung and talons cramp from a perch unfit
To sustain me
I have only my soul to blame
When lofty thoughts plummet
High places and walls fall the buttresses too frail for
Architects flights of fancy
I was built for low shelter
A dugout in the western wind
Small solace in the face of tornadic spin
Scatter the crops and erase the traces of gentle humanity
Frail daisies wont sustain me
I have only my soul to blame
When words that course through veins
Carry more than the love of blood and bone
And I am alone with nothing but whispers and wrinkled wet sheets
Rhapsodies and rhymes they crackle like the shucked husks
On the threshing floor my dreams no more worth
Than the paper scribbling balled up around my feet
This written lie
Never penned to sustain me.
TL Boehm
11/30/13
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 2:52 PM UTC
during my fifteen-minute break at work,
I saw a sleeping bag in the dugout of a baseball field.
it’s almost autumn now.
too cold for whomever this belongs to.
I leave a post-it note
asking what his name is.
my break is over so I go back to work.
the next day, I check for a response
and it’s in the garbage.
I take it out and put it back with the sleeping bag
I can wait.
the day after that I check,
it says “Doug”.
I grab a notebook and introduce myself,
“hi Doug, I’m Tanner. can I get you anything?”
the next day, “anything would help.”
“I’ll bring some back warmers you can use at night
in your sleeping bag. they’re like regular hand warmers but bigger.”
later that night, after my shift,
i do
this goes on for a while.
I’ll ask him if he needs food,
I’ll bring granola bars.
I’ll ask if he needs light,
I’ll bring a battery-powered lantern.
I ask him what he’ll do when the snow comes
I get a simple response, “I have somwhere to go.”
his spelling isn’t that great.
I ask, “where?”
no response the next day.
I think about him now.
figured I’d ask him how he got to be homeless.
he said he came to town when his father got sick,
said he lost his job for leaving.
eventually, he ran out of money.
I leave a twenty in the notebook.
the next day it reads, “thank you.”
a little bit into winter I still saw his bag
and we still exchanged notes, never once seeing each other.
one day in the middle of winter, I notice his bag is gone.
the notebook isn’t so I hide it under the dugout bench.
winter passes, I still haven’t seen him.
it’s finally spring, still no sign of him.
summer comes along, nothing
little league baseball is starting
the kids found the notebook
and ripped out every single page we ever shared,
shredding each one into tiny illegible pieces
thrown away in the trash can.
I’ll never see Doug again.
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020 at 8:23 PM UTC