The Beauty Of Baseball Poetry Contest
Matt Caliri
A supposedly wide-open, empty street
A rubber ball, a plastic bat, and a real game.
Kids playing to the baseball beat
The diamond asphalt is just the same.
Lines are drawn, and teams are picked.
The pickup games are for bragging rights
Where emotions are high, and egos are nicked.
Some kids haven't reached their grown heights.
The bigger ones hit the longer ball
The little tots hit short liners that hit parked cars.
Homers hit homers over the wall
A neighbor’s house is seeing stars.
Foul balls find a garden bed
Where a stampede of kids thrashes the roses.
A homeowner is cussing and seeing red.
Today's game comes to an end and forecloses.
Tomorrow’s stars have a dream
To play on the big stage.
Where it all started with the pickup teams
On the streets and to the homeowner’s rage.
Baseball is America’s pastime.
Hot dogs, sunflower seeds, and lemonade fill the plate.
There is a passion and a youthful chime
And these kids arrived early and don’t want to be late.
!! !! !! !! !!
!! !! !! " !!
!! !! " !! !!
!! " " !!
!! " " !!
" ' 'dear rain, stop falling—' ' ' "
puddles split the soaked asphalt,
umbrellas take flight
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In a world where shadows stretch across asphalt streets,
the modern man searches for his soul among dazzling advertisements,
alienated, stripped of ancestral creativity,
transformed from a creator into a silent consumer,
his smile, a mask on a billboard,
bearing the pride of a scentless existence,
in a world where presence becomes absence,
and essence is lost among useless objects,
our souls are just echoes in empty boxes,
and in every perfect smile hides a silence,
a silent cry for meaning, for a rebirth,
but we are trapped in mazes of shiny packaging,
where time is measured in products and not in moments,
and we, prisoners of a prefabricated dream,
lose ourselves in reflections of a distorted reality,
seeking to find, in this deafening silence,
the answer to the question we've forgotten to ask,
in a universe where authenticity is a luxury,
and truth, just a distant dream we chase,
while we dance on the edge of a collective oblivion.
If the people against, the true deniers
could change life
and rebuild the world, they:
Would erase all progress
that exists today,
and return to a nonexistent "glorious
time" of the past...
they would create a world of their own...
where the strongest
would command everything...
There would be a democracy
only for them, where they would determine
who should and who should not...
where permissiveness would reign
for proselytes and dura lex
for the rest...
Conflicts would be resolved
with bullets by those disguised
by power...
To the rich friends, everything...
all power, all glory...
To the poor... all honor
of serving the powerful with
promptness, servitude and quality...
IN BED, TABLE AND BATH!
Asphalt black gets blacker still
In the total calm, sounds disappear
Wind gives up the sin of motion
Ocean tides know no boundaries
Only the pain of waves slapped back
Over the top, tippy top of mountains
Whispering over times broken spine
Step lightly. Feel the darkness there
Fill in the crevasses of the demised
It is wise to remain in silence
Snow rocked slopes grow into boulders
Once upon a drift they failed to fall
Into sleep, through no fault known
And through no fault of their own
See gray in a world gone immobile, inert
Wonder through the buried concrete slabs
Find another tunnel less dug by minors
The age of consent is over and done
Asphalt black is getting blacker every day
In the total calm there is only silence
Home from School
A little stream by the village bridge.
Clear cold water over jagged stones
searched for pieces of china in the mud
as we meandered slowly home.
Once-treasured patterns and bits of bones and
a black eel,rolling wave,burrowing far.
We sucked sweet nectar from fuchsia flowers
on our way home from school
Sometimes on lazy summer days,
When the workmen were on the road,
We pressed our toes in black tar bubbles,
And an asphalt oily smell, followed us home
A robin's nest was a sacred find
purple foxglove,waving our fairy hands
a homemade doll,yellow plaited straw
treasures home from school
Off for milk to Twomey's farm,
huge cow-beasts, dirty, with leather-silk skin
in September our berry purple mouths
a juicy feast all the way home
Concrete
Fire escapes
Graffiti city wide
Apartment fire engines race
Jungle
Boy gets up at six
Needs no alarm of complaint
To shake
The brief night of sleep
From his hay-cropped hair
Brushes his teeth
Smokes a two dollar holler of cigarette for breakfast
A pack a day is like tax day for him
Paid by ten in the morning
Then the day is free and clear
Holds down his car as it bucks to life
Lurches away
Stops at Starbucks
Spends another hour’s dough
On two large black coffees
Picks up three buddies at the far edge
Of the Walmart parking lot
Drives two hours to arrive
At a dismal road to tame with asphalt
The boys dissolve and stick to the road
Buns of thick shoulders
Rise and fall in the oven of sun
Shoveling boils of oil and coal
Throwing
Their boots to stomp the steam
His car limps back to his driveway corral
At 9:45 in the summer evening
Devours another hour
Of Coors and McDonalds at his kitchen table
Prays very hard to God
Maybe it could rain tomorrow?
His girlfriend stands behind him
Rests her head on his shoulder
A dim light buzzing from the ceiling.
Erratic flower
in steaming asphalt sprouted
blest dandelion
Grid city
closed in streets
congested.
every man
it's a subject
in the maze
symbiotic...
the city attacks
with volcanoes
steelmakers
industrial plant...
without trees,
the city if
plant in
posts,
steel beams...
no harvest,
fertilizes
in concrete
fertilizer
bizarre...
The city
smokes,
the city
screams...
But she
causes shock!
Magic City...
the whistle
from factory
it's flute
candy!
and everyone dances...
the horns
are orchestras
spontaneous
where all
touch... and mine
throat a lump
seeing the crowd so alone...!
Our city is three restaurants, a roller rink, and a rundown dorm. We fly over red brick roads on truck beds and the squeaky wheels of shopping carts. Don't ask where we got them. Nothing good ever happen in this town, so we happen for ourselves, screaming at the moon and each other and running through the lakes that form when it rains. And our city knows how to rain. She is dying and old but we are dying and young. Well-matched, we are seventeen and waiting on an epiphany. Here is as good a place for one as any. We sit under the cover and wait for the storm.
Asphalt Nomads
By David J Walker
The nomads of the asphalt travel
In the dying light of the day as
solitary nova’s with
Walmart shopping carts
Knowing where to find discarded
Treasures
Asphalt nomads
have no numbers they answer
To many names they laugh at
Your concerns for their welfare
The asphalt Nomads
marvel at the speed and ease
Of a stolen bicycle and
The meal at the Methodist Church
Is gourmet
The asphalt nomad
Knows forever is today
And each today will last a
Lifetime of forever’s
Without birthday cards from you
The asphalt nomads
Freely roam the streets
In the early mornings
Before you are ready to
Begin your day
asphalt angels dance
august ghosts haunt the future
dogs await their days
John G. Lawless
6/2020
rain
gently
hop landing
on hot asphalt
sizzling in a melodic rhythm
blazing hot summer
a black, bad asphalt wallows
melts into dry grass
bugs get stuck dry-up
frozen in heated black spot
burnt alive dead stuck
what is it left but...
chard, burnt amber drops dots
blaze burn up insects
melts into dry grass
a black, bad asphalt wallows
hot summer blazing
8/25/19
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. ©2019
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