Monday, June 02, 2014

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.

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