Bulls Bard--The Verses
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Vegas: Game 6

7/19/2015

1 Comment

 

CHI 84               PHX 91

Action figures--
With matchstick legs
And firecracker fingers.

Real Life
Paper dolls--
Disposable.
Replaceable.

Built to break.
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Vegas: Game 5

7/17/2015

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CHI 84               TOR 80

The Bulls
Like to sign
Coaches’ sons.

Kirk,
Dunny,
And now Doug.

Scrappy.
Hard workers.
Who play the game
The way they are
Supposed to play it.

Skill and discipline
Over athleticism.

Prototypical white boys
(I can say that because I’m a white boy).

Reminds me of those friends of mine
(all dancing with forty)
Who date young girls.

Daddy issues.

So many of us
Have grown up
Feeling inadequate
Is the eyes of our fathers.

We chase the approval of men
Like junkies chase
That first high.
That unconditional love.

But daddy--
Perfect despite everything--
Remains just out of reach.

Breeds a certain type of person.
A certain type of girlfriend.
And a certain type of white boy.

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Vegas: Game 4

7/16/2015

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CHI 91               CLE 73

There is something so
Las Vegas
About this summer league.

Something sad
And plastic.

Dreams flickering
In and out
Like dying candles.

Those are not the pyramids
And that is not the Eiffel Tower.

A funhouse look-alike.
A murky snow globe.
A show.

An illusion
Grasped tight
By desperate fingers.

Slippery fingers
That understand
Letting go.

Last chances.

Foxhole prayers
Barely audible
Over the rattling
Of ice
And pennies

And the rim.
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Vegas: Game 3

7/15/2015

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CHI 86               BKN 87

Every now and then
A team will pay a player
Big money t
o 
Just
Go
Away.

Go play somewhere else,
Or something.

Some people are just
That big
A pain in the ass.

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Vegas: Game 2

7/14/2015

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CHI 66               TOR 81

It’s crazy to me
That Bairstow and Longley are friends.
What are the chances?

Now, I’ve never been to Australia,
But I imagine it bigger than that.

It is a 

CONTINENT
After all--
Not a neighborhood.

Are all the tallest people
In this country
Forced,
By some all-powerful basketball zealot (Basketball Dundee),
Into skill camps
Behind locked gymnasium doors--
Waiting for Rodman’s visit?

Olympic village
Now a prison workshop
That makes baskets.

Or maybe Luc is
Like Hakeem or Luol?

Culture hero--
Mate to the entire nation.
The builder of hospitals
And ambassador to the world.

The earnest voice that
Delivers the fireside chat.
And wishes the rest of us
G’day.

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Vegas: Game 1

7/12/2015

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CHI 84               MIN 71

I don't play with a chip on my shoulder;
I play with a log.                --Bobby Portis
Before each game,
Bobby Portis
Imagines his opponents
Slapping his mother.

Substituting their faces
Into his memories

And harnessing the anger.
Focussing the hate.
Using it.

Emotional engineering.
Alternative energy.

Make no mistake:
This is a super power.

The ability to transform
Suffering and pain

And demons and memories
Into a source of strength--

Into fuel.

It could change the
Entire World.
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The Firing of Tom Thibodeau

7/10/2015

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I used to think that
Time didn’t really exist--
That we made it up.

I was younger then.
Some would say I am still young--
But those grow fewer
Every year.

Change marks time
Like the rings of a tree.

Wind and water and time
Carve canyons into earth
And wrinkles into youth.

Occasionally
We see the eras changing--
The plates shifting.

And we have our private earthquakes.

Earn our own canyons
And wrinkles.

Proving the existence of time

To our younger selves
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    Poet Laureate of the 
    Chicago Bulls

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