Sports radio

I generally don't spend a lot of time trying to explain any of the poems I write because

a) I try not to be that guy

b) They are generally pretty self-explanatory

c) They usually aren't all that great to start with

and while b) and c) likely hold for this one as well, it is something that has been banging around in my head and in stages in notebooks for a while and was inspired to get some of it down because of a lovely, touching, and personal post that Leslie wrote about her battle with depression.

So basically, I'm not sure I can come anywhere close to writing as well as she did about the big picture of the disease, this is a poem about depression, and how it has affected me in the past, and how I know it can still come and tap me on the shoulder at any time, and how when it is here for me, I lose all desire to do the things I know could bring me happiness. So I listen to sports talk radio instead.

Sports radio

Don't care,

don't care

if Mark Bellhorn is batting

seventh or eighth, if Alan Embree

has lost a little off his fastball and
should be kept off the playoff roster.

Care, don't care about a lot and

not caring sinks me deeper into

the afternoon drive time of

Lefty and the Sportz Nutz only

to hear voices, something that

means nothing to me, voices

shouting over each other and Bruce

from the Cape thinks Lefty is a

moron for thinking the team even has

a shot this year.

Don't care, don't care, don't care

and someday I will again but for

now I need the voices to take

up the empty space and I'll never

care that Ed from Everett thinks

Danny should package the seventeenth

pick in the draft to go after a lottery

slot and still I listen eight,

ten, twelve hours a day because

the shouting and voices that mean

nothing to me are better than the

emptiness and better than believing

I deserve to hear voices I'll

enjoy and boy

if that

third line

isn't enough to take us to

the conference finals this year

we are going to run these bums

out of town.