I saw the best plans of my team destroyed by an
anemia of offense, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the waiver wires at dawn
looking for another bat,
wrongheaded suits burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the an .850 OPS hitter in the machin-
ery of night,
who starved for runs and with a bullpen in tatters sat
up dreaming in the supernatural darkness of
Lidge's slider coming back to him, floating across the outside corner
contemplating dropping at the last,
who bared their brains to Heaven at the trade deadline and
saw more production and Ausmus staggering on Men-
doza Line illuminated,
who expelled from the central garden for crazy &
obscene routes to the flies the esteemed
Mr. T.,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in their underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and watching
their shining knight Jennings lob the ball,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
the middle market with a change purse embroidered “Alice”,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank fruity drinks with umbrellas in them
in Kissimmee, like death, or purgatory, their
hopes like a drama queen empty in the end,
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cigarettes and endless calls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward deals for
Tejada & Garland, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote-like delusions of long balls, in the backyard green tree cemetery
park, dumb-ass whining over the rooftops,
Wal-Mart desolated borough of joyless noons
blinking in the ugly light, sun and moon and retractable
roof vibrating and then it was clear – it was time
to act, to shitcan the Count, ranting about champions,
who chained themselves to light rail for the endless
ride from West U. to holy East Downtown on benzedrine
until the noise of church bells and pre-game drunks brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
into the dreary light of Truth,
who sank into the darkness and slipped out of light
floated out and drifted free down over the bayou at
noon into the shimmering light, down over the ship canal
and went down somewhere into Channelview, near Dell Dale,
where they all belonged.
