Red Tin Noodles

Mike Webster often played in pain.
Died young, with black spots on his brain.
In football, helmets oft collide,
concussing all that’s hid inside.
A nose may break, a lip get fatter:
what becomes of one’s gray matter?
Years of tackles, spears and blocks:
much like butting heads with rocks.
A diagnosis, finally,
showed brain disease called CTE.
Amnesia, pain, severe depression:
sometimes football’s last impression.
Approaching fifty, out of luck,
“Iron Mike” lived in a truck.
All-star center, Hall of Fame:
now a victim of the game.
This sad Steeler’s tale, we’re sorry,
hasn’t changed the post game story.
To deal with damage of this sort
may change the nature of the sport.

No sexual favors
in cells of his choice.
No showering scenes
with the young girls or boys.
No cursing or joking:
he don’t like the noise.
The celibate turnkey’s on duty.
Ain’t no use in showin’ your booty.
No cigarette drop offs
or dope runs tonight.
Keep contraband magazines
tucked out of sight.
His only obsession’s
with doing things right.
The celibate turnkey’s so straight,
his righteousness seems
more like hate.

He got got seven years hard time.
It felt like forty-nine.
He got caught with several bones.
It wasn’t such a crime.
On his appeal, he made a deal.
He said he’d name some names.
But then refused, he won’t be used,
he would not play their games.
And so he sat inside a cage
just like a dog for years.
He may have bent, but never broke
or let them see his tears.
And on the day of his release,
he swore he’d rather die
than let them take him back again,
then went home and got high.
Better to live like dogs, he said,
unleashed and free of rules,
than subjugate all action
to a code devised by fools.

I think I’m feeling drowsy.
Or perhaps my arch has fallen.
I can’t get up for work today.
It may be all the pollen.
My elbow is enflamed
and my sinuses impacted.
I choked up when I called in sick.
Perhaps I overacted.
I need another cabinet.
My pills are overflowing.
I feel as if my scalp’s peeled back.
Maybe my brain is showing.
My stomach’s feeling queasy,
the result of this congestion.
Whatever ails prevails,
appears, "voila," at mere suggestion.
My doctor’s secretary
has me climbing up the walls.
Each time I get through to her
he’s accepting no more calls.

The sun, that yellow spider’s web,
revolves again around my head.
The ground, alive and full of meat,
pulls back and down and grabs my feet.
Seems the constant need
one feels for elevation
ties directly to the genes
of caste and station.
Gravity is just a shill for politics.
Evolution’s just a bag of dirty tricks.

To gulch or to disgorge,
another mesa forge.
Environment is in like flint
or bears who covet porridge.
To butte or to abut,
tree or adobe hut.
A rock well placed
is soon erased.
All nature is a rut.
To flood or scorch the earth,
another big bang birth.
Each mountain tall
one day may fall.
And all for
what it’s worth.

To a beetle eaten young,
I dedicate my tongue.
I’ll cut it up in thirds
and feed it to the birds.
For words will not suffice
the nature of this vice.
A beetle eaten young.
Who now will roll our dung?

The shameful reek of radishes.
The nodding head of lettuce.
Somewhere a red onion weeps.
Black olives pitted against whom?
Someone must control the whole,
roam the outskirts of the bowl,
armed with pepper spray,
tongs at the ready.
A dressing down’s perhaps in order.
A shredding of the carrot crew.
Put the hardboiled egg in solitary.
Toss the rest about.
Threaten and serve.
Call in the choppers.

In the pulling tide of time
we seemed to lose perspective.
Visionary acumen appeared
to drift away.
In the threatening twilight,
hiding now our sole objective,
voices sought out silence
although much was left to say.
As bullet shots and microdots
created their own language,
a media hypnosis
cast a pall across the land.
Those within could bask in sin
while those without must anguish.
Someone pulled the plug
on this utopia we planned.

How to describe a hayfield without sneezing?
Or portray the sunlight slanting through the barn
as more than dust motes aswarm?
Even the cat running the fence above the flowers
caused him significant problems.
Rilke’s allergy dominated his senses,
if not his poetry. Seldom discussed are his
"Ode to a Sodden Handkerchief" or
"Your Lips Are as Red as My Eyes, My Love."
And no one seems to care about his letters
to a young allergist, suffering though they may be.

You’ll have to go on inner wind
to get to the heart of the cartoon monkey.
To see the numbers dashed and sinned.
The alphabet, your average junkie.
And down the stairs of other worlds.
And up into the light of silence.
There’s your shadow, locked and curled.
Clouds are tame. Sun is violence.
You’ll have to go on slow rewind
to get to the vein of the masters passed.
On line, the winters, grey and blind.
Long falls of marching underclassed.
And down the pipe of lifelike smoke.
And up the stream of bloody sorrow.
Cartoon monkey beats the joke.
Turns into a man tomorrow.

It belonged to a little old lady.
That hole is just a decoration.
It’s supposed to smoke like that.
The shedding is part of its charm.
The wobble will self correct in time.
This is the original paint.
That smell only happens on hot days.
The nicks can be fixed really easy.
It never came with that part.
Only the surface is cracked.
It was serviced regularly.
Those stains are a part of the pattern.
That sound goes away when it warms up.
I wouldn’t sell it if I weren’t moving.

A wallet lost in Buffalo
was found in Montreal.
A couple in the Grande Hotel
espied it in the hall.
No money left inside it,
and no credit cards as well,
but photos there
that would be missed.
That was not hard to tell.
A small boy with a missing tooth;
a girl with bright red hair.
A woman who could be a wife;
a smiling elder pair.
They mailed it back to Buffalo,
an address found within.
"We’re sorry for your loss," they wrote.
"Take comfort in your kin."

To tattle tale on spies is most unwise.
They’ll boil you in contempt and baste with lies.
Though vigilance defines a freedom lover,
they’ll put you in the ground and call it cover.
Their evil is religious in its purity.
They face a task prodigious: your security.
Whatever seems suspicious in your eyes
can be corrected by a drop of spies.

Gigantic youth.
Ruler of the jungle gym.
Chewing crayons like pez.
Unearthing the sandbox.
Grown to colossal teen.
Eating the phone book.
Pimples like doughnuts.
Squashing the school bus.
Redistributing. Redecorating.
Head of the class.
Shoulders of the world.
King Kong of the prom.
Mascot. Team. Fan base.