Blog Archives - Bulls Bard--The Verses

Game 88

4/30/2015

Round One - Game Six
CHI 120 MIL 66

Thirty-four to sixteen
Finally my favorite team
Has started off extremely well,
But shall we win--lone time will tell.

Fifty-six to twenty-eight
Milwaukee seething in their hate,
And acting out, as children do--
Giannis got a flagrant two.

Sixty-five to thirty-three
Crowd is quiet--draped in green.
Bully took a sudden hit,
And bully cried a little bit.

Eighty-four to thirty-eight
The crowd begins to dissipate,
And all that’s left among the stands
A couple hundred Chi-town fans.

Eighty-eight to forty-four
The ball a comet--space the floor.
Little floater down the lane
Falls in soft and sweet, like rain.

Ninety-one to fifty-two
Almost too good to be true--
Thibs, take out the starters please,
Let Jo and Derrick rest their knees.

One-sixteen to sixty-one
This one here is all but done.
And finally it’s understood
We are too big, too strong, too fast, too good.

Game 87

4/27/2015

Round One - Game Five
CHI 88 MIL 94

3 Haiku

Yeah, so they beat us.
Two out of seven’s not bad,
But it ain’t enough

I was thinking Cavs
While we were playing the Bucks--
This one is on me

Woke up in a hole
And yawning--Started to climb.
Should be out Thursday

It is hard
when you are down
from the very start
of the game.

Just ask my kids.

Handicap,
to them,
is a word
more about hospitals
than country clubs.

My year
is like a song.

It starts
and finishes
and has all the right breaks.

Verse chorus verse chorus
bridge chorus outro.

But the world moves fast
these days--
And I,
like a lot of us,
have been changed by it.

So focused
on what comes next,
that I’m barely even listening
anymore.

Game 86

4/25/2015

Round One - Game Four
CHI 90 MIL 92

Trust me--

There is a great satisfaction
in breaking rules.

The bigger the better.

Especially in that moment--
Brief and exhilarating---
Before the consequence has been doled out.

Like blind-siding
The bully in the sandbox.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

I used to light fires--
Mostly in garbage cans--
At schools and down alleys.

I would stand there
Watching them,
While all my friends ran away.

Proud
Like a father--
Of my over-achieving child,

Who has my eyes--
And my temperament.

Game 85

4/23/2015

Round One - Game Three
CHI 113 MIL 106

Stacey: You might be able to get away with that on a Sunday afternoon, in a four o’clock gym league.

I was big
When I was little.

Five foot two in fifth grade--
Six foot two in eighth.

Pretty good at basketball--
Better than all of my friends.

And less afraid.

I was like Tigger--
Bouncing all over the place
Like a god damned lunatic.

A beast in the post, too.

Size,
Strength,
And touch.

Bigger,
Faster,
And Stronger.

It was fun as hell.

But then I got to High School
Where things are
All-the-way different.

Where the cliques
Are coded by color,
Divided by hair length,
And then filtered through history.

Where big means seven feet,
And fast means
something I’ll never quite
All-the-way understand.

I was
Clearly
Out of my league.

And had to go play
Rock-n-Roll

With the potheads
And the band geeks.

Game 84

4/20/2015

Round One - Game Two
CHI 91 MIL 82

Neil: This team can’t beat you with talent or depth, so they just...
Stacey: I call it muddying the waters

I can swim,
But I’m not at home in the water
like some people.

I’m always very aware
of my clumsiness
and the danger--
lurking.

As a kid,
I would have nightmares
where I would have to accept
my drowning--
after fighting it
and fighting it.

Now I know these dreams
were about death--
not water.

But
for a while,
water would trigger
that dream feeling--
that panic.

I would face my mortality
every time my
head went under.

A shower
like a car
dipping suddenly--
A sickening rush.

But I wouldn't let it stop me
from living--

Snorkeling in the Caribbean--
Jumping in strange muddy rivers
on hot Texas road trips.

Stakes is high
like airplanes--
that’s life.

I close my eyes
and float,

Getting lost in even the muddiest water
as if it were the sky.

Game 83

4/18/2015

Round One - Game One
CHI 103 MIL 91

Not too long ago
I read some
Thing about lions

About how there aren't many
Older males
In the wild

They die quick

Food is scarce
In the wild

And food is for the Alpha
And his children
And the females

Who hunt
And bear the young

And the rest
Have to live off scraps--
Or die

Scraps
Fought over
With the scavengers
That travel in packs

And most males starve
Or kill each other
Fighting for what’s left

But some survive this way
For years

Learning to live off little
And to fight off the packs
Of vultures and jackals

Getting stronger
And meaner
While the alpha
Gets fat

Game 82

4/15/2015

CHI 91 ATL 85

I only read the sports section. It’s the only section I trust to be the truth.

There used to be something
called a newspaper

Third person
objective
supposedly
(but not actually
of course)

Hand-held campfires

Elders passing on
the most important stories of the day
supposedly
(but not actually
of course)

A slow motion Jacob’s Ladder
falling horizontally
and made from the molted skin
of long-dead snakes

A borderline mystical
piece of garbage

And they were everywhere

Like a secular (kind of)
disposable (sort of)
Torah (or something)

Hold up
Fold up
Leave behind

A strange clumsy elegance to it

Like wrapping cables
properly
or tying a tie

A simple-enough-seeming dance
I could never
all the way
master

Like the electric slide
or smoking a cigar
or shuffling cards cool

like they do in the movies

Game 81

4/13/2015

CHI 113 BKN 86

I read once
the most popular card-game
in America is
Solitaire.

Pretty powerful metaphor, that one.

However it is
we choose to approach things,
we are a certain
undeniable
Alone.

Every second.

Even in a crowd.
Even in an intimate moment between lovers.

Even when we believe
We are playing against
One another.

In winning
and losing.

Always.

At best,
each situation
carries with it
a pattern of tones and lights
that we must match,
or express,

or else
deal with that dreaded buzzer.

Game 80

4/11/2015

CHI 114 PHI 107

We used to have a pet shark.

He was very
    very
         friendly--

For a shark.

When we’d take him to the park
Kids would want to pet him--
Play with him.

Does he bite?
    they asked.

Of course he bites,
    we would say.

He is a shark,
after all.

There was a teeny tiny bug
flying around my face
for the better part of fifteen minutes
This morning

Every time I thought I had shooed it away
it would pop back up
between my eyes
and my focus

This thing was small as shit
but it was doing its thing--
walking on my glasses--
driving me crazy

I killed it
eventually
but--jesus christ
did it beat the odds

Game 79

4/9/2015

CHI 89 MIA 78

Recently,
On our family vacation,
My mother held a meeting
To discuss her dying.

She is not dying now, but
It’s important to talk
About these things--
She says.

There are systems in place--
Forms to fill out,
Meant to reflect
The complexity
Of human emotion--

The complexity of fear.

A sliding scale
Turned binary.

No middles or maybes
For my mother.

On or off--
Life or death.

Simple.
Dramatic.

Having grown up
Raised by a generation
Who believed
All they had to fear was fear, itself--

She believed it.

And developed a keen fear
Of fear itself.

Terrified.

The last boogeyman.

Fear itself--
Lurking in the shadows,
Following down dark streets,
Cutting the brake lines,
Battling on building tops.

A lifetime of running
From running.

Hiding
From hiding.

Scaring her to death.