he had no name, no birth certificate anyway, so he went by whatever strangers called him, look or shade, sometimes Moot, other times Quicksand and so with the world series over, he found old books, of Clem Bukaraskin in Cottage Grove, tossing pebbles at rodents to perfect aim and Clete Tamboykins swinging sticks at popcorn seeds to sync arms and hips dreaming of of a 27-game hitting streak by a boy born in far away town Idaho, a history of the PCL, Orlando Mitz’s trick pitches and all those tragic baseball suicides, and so he read and researched all the way to mid-February and full moon pitchers and catchers reported life all over again.
the 28th
it was a no win situation. The first five batters were far from dubious. they’d been nailing hard drives into the everywhere since the first grade and here they were, all together, on the same team, in the same line up, and across the small sea stood an awkward gang, hair kind of messy, bowl cut black bangs, switch blades, reciting psalms. they had no rhyme, only nods of the head to do your own thing and they won with bunts and what not and there was a tall kid after the win who wanted to be added to this other team and there was a winter and another season opening day and the team rosters were not the same…and the game went on anyway.
a beer
i haven’t been watching much of the baseball this post season, but i caught the news the other night. they were interviewing one of the three nobel prize winners for science. she said galaxies are born from black holes and that got me thinking about a lot of things like me pacing my apartment, drunk, way past the liquor store closing time and me really wanting another drink and not having a flask when my fridge opens and two closed beers bump to the floor and then roll right to me and I swear there were no beers in the refrigerator……is this the creation story rhetoric….of something coming from nothing…..of two beers suddenly appearing? is the universe expanding? do the people on the moon or people on other planets really care what’s happening to planet earth?
tubas too
there’s something forever about a marching band – like maybe love, gum, cigarette, wafer christ cookie, or fuck that, we’re more desperate now and in need of a longer lasting fix, a stack of toilet paper coupons, a prayer, or a long glass of whisky. I guess they all serve similar purposes….a space ship runway towards our heart welcoming joy into our lives. lobotomy? I had a hankering for some drums a few minutes ago and Tusk came to mind and up on the you tube scoreboard came the video with no fans and i laughed, not a belly aching i forgot why i started laughing in the first place laugh…more of a kismet i’ll be damned kind of laugh…..NO FANS. Who needs electricity when we got tubas blaring in the breeze and a catcher eyeing up his wrist cheat sheet. exhibition, prohibition, regular season inhibition, late inning condition, 8 teams per league in the covid playoff rendition, i’m in.
mike squires, west side story, and haircut 100
hey look, yeh, right there, across the street, a baseball player, or some semblance of one, got a john deere cap turned backwards, wearing a black blazer, like he was going to a wedding or a funeral or something, one sleeve rolled up but what appears to be a three quarter blue sleeve baseball shirt on the side with the blazer sleeve rolled up……something coming, something going….. and a wrist band like scooter gennet (that fading red sun), but wait a second, he’s holding a sponge in his right hand so he’s a catcher, but it’s in his right hand? That would make him a left-handed catcher thrower? Is that Mike Squires? or was he the left handed guy who played third base? Anyway, he’s whistling an old show tune. I can’t place it, but good thing i’m not wearing headphones because i can hear him slur “jets and sharks” so i assume it’s west side story, not that i’m a show tune musical maven, but that one, my mom listened to on her old record player and what better song to whistle by an old ballplayer than west side story, the new york, the gangs, the two teams, the rivalries the “friction is the mother of pearls” (john cooper clarke) the civil war, the inner civil war. i think i’ll cut my hair.
milwaukee is often called brew city
getting hooked on old world series highlight videos, the ones that show fans cheering, player’s lovers, and have a narrator. well, i was wondering about sober and all those addiction hotlines and the thing is there’s nothing better than being drunk on world series highlights videos so screw the hotlines, I’m going back to the 1979 world series highlight film and getting drunk off that, with omar moreno’s weight which couldn’t have been more than 170 and yet, the wind didn’t whoooooosh him into the next town and willie stargell’s arm pumping and some oriole’s hair and the only 11 hit shutout in post season play, which didn’t happen in 1979, but I bet it was a lazy, afternoon game back when playoff games were played in the day so kids could run home from school and enjoy the game sweating not really concerned with the math of it all.
it’ll be nice to see you again…
way back when
so many years ago
so many moments ago,
yesterday,
there was an opening day first kiss and a long holding hands and world series fight and another first kiss.
i love red cheeks and rich people and poor people and people walking and people rolling wheel chair and it makes me think about the the origin of species and creation versus evolution, but abstract and everybody thought about that. vomiting drunk morning in the high school bathrooom stalls. we became allies but I had my own experiences. I’d seen a pile of abandoned clothes on the side of the road and it reminded me of a salt pillar from sunday bible class, but fuck it I’m turning. i’m looking at that salt thing. i’m going to 14th and hopgood with my brown paper booze bag, where we can have a whisky in park bench flask heaven.
glen slater’s writings…
if you read W.K. Kortas or Verdun2’s Blog then you know by now that Glen Slater passed away. It really sucks the big one. Bad news…crap, shit, fuck, dammit and that doesn’t completely cover it, really bad news, but the good news is that his writings are still on line. Glen got rid of some blogs, started up new ones, got rid of those and started up new ones again and so on and so on, but he did keep one of them for a long time another one for pretty long too. here’s the links to those two so you can read him for yourself. if i find any more links to his other blogs, i’ll put them up here and who knows maybe someone can figure out a way to put them into a book? Actually, I just checked to make sure if both of the links worked and the second one is marked as private. Oh well, the first one – tall tales and true stories is ready for all to be read and it covers a chunk of time too, lots of Glen’s writings!
can we play Jenga again?
the game seemed easy enough – place the wood pieces, one on top of the other. we were free and easy at first, building it up, defying gravity and what not, but then the wind or something changed, her exposed ankle grew cold and my moves became strategic and surgical and careful and yet, still, I made a bad move and all the wood pieces came tumbling down. it reminded me of being a kid and going all baseball bat crazy on a bee hive. there was no hope at all. anyone in the vicinity was susceptible. it was as democratic as death. everything was conspiring against us and she went left and i went right, but there were a few bee hive scraps embers on the ground for the next round of Jenga love.
almost animals
the ship started sinking from the beginning. it was that bad breath the baby wafted on the way home from the maternity ward, death shadow following us from the cradle to the grave, book ends with baseball in between, any kind of baseball, all of it relaxing, fans or no fans. I went to a game here in Quebec once, an LBEQ game, the perfect escape, and there was no one in the stands; there were no stands, only a parking lot beside a laundry mat. i sat behind the fence, in the lotus position trying to keep my back straight and in the first inning gave up, and sat flat on my back, then leaning on my side, head resting on my open palm, to see through the holes in the fence, like a horse staring into the valley for hours or a cow on its side, tail waving like a xanax’d cornstalk.
