Busted at the Crossroads of Eternity
The Grim Reaper knew my file: idle misery, foul mouth,
& more debt than a shipwreck of Spanish doubloons. I
lost more parlays than pirates on planks, and taxes
milked me for everything except my whiskers. I was too
young to burn a draft card. I marched between
limestone monuments and Wall Street banks. My muse
cut my heart into ham slices, yet I broke bread & gave
up larger chunks. Three one way roads lead to my
afterlife:
1.) shovel coal on the Titanic
2.) wash upon the shore of an island with cannibals
3.) watch cricket in a smoggy stadium packed with Groucho MarX impersonators.
Jesus was cool for trouncing the money lenders
from the temple like a Vegas bouncer. When water
becomes thick enough ice we can walk on it. The best Christen
prayer is a Buddhist mantra. Bless the bumper stickers
that say, God is Great! We know those drivers are up to no good.
Bless the folks who cradled my dust in their palms. I’m busted
at the crossroads of eternity. Baptize my eyes with beer & drop
them into the jaws of hellhounds standing guard at the gate.
Circling the Bases with Hank Aaron
In 1974, elementary school boys did science fairs on NASA but I wrote book reports
on Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, who was chasing the major league Home Run King crown.
I didn’t know about the Cold War space race. Dad was home before working
the graveyard shift at the bearing factory. He turned on the TV as Hank
twitched his hips and dug into the batter’s box against the Dodgers’ Al Downing
in the Launching Pad, Fulton County Stadium, April 8th, Atlanta, Georgia.
Babe Ruth’s record had stood for decades, like a confederate general
carved into a stone mountainside. As a boy, in Mobile, Alabama, Henry
swung broomsticks cross-handed at bottle caps under street lights.
The Negro League’s Indianapolis Clowns signed him to his first contract.
He joined the Big Leagues with the Braves in 1954, the same year
The Supreme Court struck out the Board of Education. Hate mail and death threats
forced him to secret hotels apart from teammates as he homered his way to Babe’s 714.
Bat stirring over his shoulder, fastball down the middle, Hank swung through the seams. The line drive cleared the left-centerfield fence. The reliever Tom House
caught it in the bullpen. Cheers detonated in the stadium. Two white college students rushed the field. They patted him on the shoulders between second and third
and made him flinch. He crossed the plate. Photographers horse-shoed around him.
He shook hands with his teammates and the mascot, Chief Noc-a-Homa,
hugged his mother, shouted, Thank God it’s over! Vin Scully was on the call,
What a marvelous moment for the country…a black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep south.
Hank capped his career in 1976, the nation’s bicentennial. His 715th home run
revealed more about Americans than astronauts playing golf on the moon.
Fishing for Apollo
Apollo drowned in a man-made lake on a Sunday.
He could’ve covered left field and batted cleanup
in a double-header, but laying sod on God’s Day
fertilized his paycheck twice as nice. After eight hours,
he unlaced his boots, thumbed his socks off
and dropped them onto the bank. A resident said,
I was washing dishes. He was wading hip deep, splashing off dirt and grass, but I didn’t look out the window again because I suddenly had to change a diaper. He slipped on a muddy slope and stuck in the muck, ankle deep. A rescue team craned him up, purple and bloated, in a boxer’s pose.
After the funeral, his youngest sister ate everyone’s cake. His older brother drove back to the shopping mall with the TV he had bought him that day as a present due to a recent quarrel. My brother and I went along, traversed the mall like Cyclopes, & pierced our ears.
The next week, a credit card arrived. I moved out of an apartment and into a car, shoplifted to pay tuition. Graduated. Today, it’s drizzling, and sunshine somewhere else, and it’s quiet enough to hear the gasp and sigh of a lyric poet splashing in a puddle without a line to grab.
Between Hands at the Poker Table
The priest said the Pope was my president. I asked him why America wasn’t mentioned in the Bible.
He replied, God just called it Heaven. Childhood swung by as slow as the swing of a pitch fork. ERA meant earned run average, not Equal Rights Amendment. When I was twenty-three, a goddess with a beer shook my cathedral with her chimes and decibels, The church wants every fetus to be cut from the cord as a Catholic. Twice, I saw his Holiness deliver noon blessings in St. Peter’s Square.
His white zucchetto bobbed in the open window with a purple drapery. The second time, I was about to double-down on my Faith, but my pocket got picked by a kid in the plaza during prayer. Losses and lessons are future aces in my hands. Deal.
Bio
Kenneth May was a member of the last Free People’s Poetry Workshop led by Etheridge Knight in Indianapolis, Indiana from 1989 to 1991. His poems have appeared in a number of literary journals. His recent memoir, “Dice in a Hard Time Hustle: Yusef Komunyakaa and Etheridge Knight, 1989 to 1991,” was published by Wesleyan University Press in the anthology “Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems, For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa.” Since November 11, 2000, he has served as the founder and creative director of the Liquid Arts Network, which is a platform dedicated to presenting art, supporting artists, and connecting communities in Busan, South Korea, Asia, and beyond.