"gridiron" poems
my mother once foretold
that my overwhelming disgust
poured onto my skin and
patches of personalities
will put me on a gridiron
and wave me as a vapor heat
bearable, annoying, and
unwanted — but!
it is a process i forego
before i love the person
who will love me more than
i despise me
and that person is me
i am my wildfire
and i am my flood
Mar 21, 2019
Mar 21, 2019 at 2:06 AM UTC
That gorgeous gridiron beauty
Strives to be the best
Always training and preparing
She is a cut above the rest
It is no wonder
That her teammates follow her lead
She is a person that inspires
She knows how to succeed
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 7:03 PM UTC
Clockwork heart
It beats hands free
Pumping steel
Though the assembly line
That’s me
Watchtower body
Skeletally strong
Calcium foundation
That carries on
Life’s long
Air’s free
Gridiron lungs
Empower me
Breathe in
I live
Breathe out
I’m dying
Machine-like body
Keeps me surviving
Microchip mind
Making choices
Basic instinct
Reprogrammed
By voices
Crash course
In life
Without airbags
Wheels and gears
Slow and cease
Assembly line halts
Rest in peace
Mar 18, 2012
Mar 18, 2012 at 11:13 PM UTC
in the city where they rise now,
weeds waist high in summer times,
aglitter under with still-luxuriant diamonds
when the sun shines just so,
even in winter
before lost under snow
all that's left of the window
from which a sweet Juliet surveyed prospects
playing touch football below in the street,
pausing gridiron glories for passing cars
or ladies with bags of groceries in arm
the broken tooth of the block,
just a lot, brick and rock
packed hard
under metal treads of reaping machines,
attracting a profane collection
of neighbors’ wind-blown refuse
to which none will lay claim today
the lovely vanished,
as if her gaze west as sun set
finally pulled her away through clear panes,
one life rejected limited, mundane
and left lifeless a cradle to crumble
none here remember her
every face changed, new as the years
or aged by insults of time and moved on -
nor she the stoop, once so sturdy and safe;
an ancient sycamore's welcome embrace,
cool every August,
would last forever
to the innocent mind of a child
and the woman forgot the crack
in the cemented back yard
where ants lived -
a girl once stared for hours
as they harvested
a crust of sandwich
hidden from the raucous street,
the heat of the sun,
which she decided to follow to its glorious end,
leaving behind a field fallow
where ants,
oblivious to a world that had changed,
fend, still, for a meal
in their broken concrete
Feb 20, 2011
Feb 20, 2011 at 11:43 AM UTC
Clad in green and white,
With all unyielding mettle,
Master the gridiron!
Sep 8, 2024
Sep 8, 2024 at 11:40 PM UTC
why can’t I go back?
to simpler times
four stanza rhymes
limes and minds intertwined
its become unkind
joy declined
plagued by lack of bread
I said bread
loafs
hold the fishes
flakey cakes baked
flat pita meat and cheese
**** gluten free diabetes
self-imposed
undiagnosed
just following my nose
the bird says “it always knows”
back when cereal wasn’t genetically engineered
something to be feared
not for a child to be reared
mirrored in the exterior
fake tans dot the land
useless hands
clandestine
hidden
gridiron lockdown
drowning
clowning
seeking peace from beastly yeast
creased forehead
brow disjointed
appointed anointed one undone
no guns
sunshine fabrication
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 2:20 PM UTC
“How does it feel, studying for your first exam of the semester?” My sister Annick dug at me, via Facetime.
“Oh, I’m miserable and no one even knows!” I exclaimed excitedly.
I already miss summer’s sense of infinite time and space, and life on the lake, with its big, wet, melancholy summer rains. But most of all, I miss the travel and delicious, swirling, excesses that form the dark side of long holiday freedoms.
I’ve been called excessive, I accept that and I have to check that aspect of my nature, from time to time.
“Don’t you have any brakes?” My roommate Leong once asked me, like I was some runaway train.
I remember last summer, how we almost eased into fall. As summer had faded, things changed and slowed down, as the European students turned back to their serious, ordinary lives. The bars and streets became deserted, carousels stopped spinning, arcade games were turned off, yachts sailed away, the eager summer wait-staff vanished from the elegant hotels. Brightly lit, summer-gaudy Saint Tropez became just another faded seaside town, where the paint everywhere suddenly seemed chipped and cheap.
This year, we sped up, by spending the last couple of weeks in flashy, frantic, fluorescent Manhattan - oh, man.
Then BOOM, we were dropped, as if from a great height, back into university life, back to cafeteria lines, shuttle buses and the scholastic gridiron - which oddly enough, has a lot in common with the teenage world. It was going from a-hundred-mile-an-hour adult freedom, to dealing with all the old teenage issues, like homework, tests, studying, the endless clock-watch scheduling of to and from classes - you know, the physicality of academics.
It sounds rough, I know. We’ve been told that as seniors, we can expect an even more important and frenetic emphasis on social life. Yep, we’ll be stepping things up to a whole new level this year!
Woot!! Maybe I’ll even get to wear some makeup!
.
.
A song for this:
September by Earth Wind & Fire
Sep 5, 2024
Sep 5, 2024 at 2:40 PM UTC
Our Left Coast sighs in a stupor of red
from evergreen coasts to the casting bed.
Hollywood’s big leagues deal their fatal blow;
vapid perspectives from stars in the know.
Glamour holds court: socialite solutions
when celebrities talk revolutions.
But red alone would bring our nation harm
cut loose from white and blue—and should alarm
the audience, who pay to see their plays
while questioning their wanton West-coast ways:
Designer-reds, a stain upon our land
where red with white and blue ought take a stand.
Such fluff from the stage set who roll in dough
is Hollyweird yeast—rising now to show
beautiful and swelling irrelevance
unaware of its insignificance:
Hypocrite pretenders all paid to act
in films where decent values are attacked.
Let us turn then from Thespis‘ leering smile
to lace up cleats and run the gridiron mile
where other plays get tossed in endless zones
as commentators rave in heightened tones
while fools raise fists—then take the well-payed knee,
their pigskin antics sold to you and me.
****** a fat mike before their muscled face.
Note well the dull reaction, low as base.
These tattooed thugs make vain attempt, through speech
multitudes of more thuggish fans to reach.
The sad attempt to use their words in vain
lacks clear interpretation. Yall nome sain ?
The musclebound elect, who toss a ball
(as if their silly game was all in all)
should stick to sports; decline to state their views
lest fans their spectacle no longer choose.
Thus stars of field and screen steal every show,
and cause our dying culture worlds of woe.
Apr 5, 2018
Apr 5, 2018 at 2:03 PM UTC
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.
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 1:57 PM UTC
Golden haired and handsome, Joe seemed to have it all.
He’d won a PAC 8 championship just that previous Fall.
Surely the Heisman would be his; another prize to win.
He started strongly, at least at first, but would falter at the end.
Joe Roth had Melanoma and it ravaged skin and bone,
It was a lonely battle, the hardest fight he’d known.
Joe Roth was a gamer who would strap his helmet on
and go out on the gridiron though his strength was nearly gone.
He knew that he would not grow old, or play the game for pay.
In this final autumn of his life he merely wished to play.
. Despite fatigue and nausea he still made every start,
Until his game clock ran out on an overburdened heart.
There’s a moment when the cheering stops, when a man feels most alone;
blind-sided by a tackle while checking down against the zone.
When game clock seconds tick away and the outcomes not in doubt
Joe stood tall in the pocket even when it was a rout.
He gave the game the best he had, then it was his time to go.
He was an All- American, and no ordinary Joe
Dec 27, 2016
Dec 27, 2016 at 8:55 PM UTC
If I had a magic hour glass
That could rewind the times
I'd relive the days of going to school
Back when I had a reason to socialize
When friends came in the call of your name
Across halls and thrown out on the gridiron
I would have enjoyed it more
Knowing then that things really do get better
I would have picked up my chin
Faced reality bc I was pretending
I was looking down on the earth
Watched my steps closely
Precatious of never letting them see me fall
Practiced ballet to be leary of pranksters feet
If I had a hour glass
I'd write to myself and say it was better
Even if it doesn't seem like it
Another breathe is worth breathing
When dreams are achieved
Instead of bought
I'd try to enjoy the friends I had
While they were around
Would have laughed more
But its the little things we forget to enjoy
We seem to regret
Nov 11, 2016
Nov 11, 2016 at 6:10 PM UTC
I'm here
in a
bell and
weather does
tell how
stellar ink
now well
ring in
a jar
where once
a snake
on the
loose whistle
her for
supper that
surely invert
the gridiron
Jan 7, 2018
Jan 7, 2018 at 10:40 AM UTC
I've already died a million times
Reborn without missing a beat
A gridiron burden much larger than fading
I am here: as is, where is. so it goes...
Life hit me broadside and I danced naked in the streets,
exposed in lunar illumination
Enveloped in fearful curiousity
I dared to be different within an archaic monoculture
I cannot lie down, I've already tried!
This is who I am
Sep 6, 2017
Sep 6, 2017 at 5:55 PM UTC
On clear days it rains buckets,
swelling the headwaters
and the algae blooms gluttonous.
Rufous clay breaks into wider trenches
and the towhee flashes away.
You never flinched when I crushed your hand
on that first day on the ****** rise before a charging
buffalo sun, gnat swarming my wild panicked eyes,
giddy with each hill blue upon bluer receding.
I'm a woodland kid, baby, creek crouching
with roots and canteens of sassafras
in the leopard light and leafmold;
the wannabee Tarzan swinging
on wintercreeper vines.
I'm the scurrying rat in the stormdrain,
taking the shortcut home for supper.
But there you were, straight as loblolly pine
in the canyon lands of Chicago, prairie drifted
in with the drifters and the hawk winds
of winter to find the woodland kid dragged
blind before the gridiron sky.
Two rivers led nowhere, two rivers
and a chance confluence of running
merged and pooled in a one bedroom cave
on Belmont, hatching our tadpole dreams,
fattening the swimmers with mustard greens
and gaudy hotdogs.
When we crested the banks,
on the continental divide,
one to the woodland, one to plains,
the water ran as waters do,
and as in each great story,
the boy follows the girl,
to the ****** rise before
the charging buffalo sun,
where you held my hand
and I saw the sky for the first time.
Aug 8, 2019
Aug 8, 2019 at 4:49 PM UTC