Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Homeward Bound

I was driving on the I-10 east bound near the Mojave Desert at midnight. A woman driving a compact car sped up in the lane next to me and then the 18-wheeler that was quite a ways behind me suddenly was riding my ass. It was only a moment, seconds, surrounded, only the sand at my right. I had to do something, speed up.

No problem.

The DJ from Los Angeles played a three chord song with a ton of licks on the blues scale. "Free Bird."

Friday, August 13, 2010

Three Poems and a Thought

Dead men leave me their books:
"Baseball Prospectus,"
"Best Loved Poems/

Best Loved Poets"
and "American
Wines."

...

The Little League West and Northwest Region playoffs at Al Houghton Stadium in San Bernardino have exhausted my energies the last week. And what have I learned?

I learned that baseball is still America's pastime -- and there's no close second.

Over 10,000 people showed up to watch the 11 and 12 year olds from Ocean View Little League of Huntington Beach, representing Southern California, play their second West Region pool play game (a game of relatively little significance) against Hawaii on Saturday night. I heard even more folks showed up to watch the Southern Californians play the Northern Californians on Tuesday.

10,000 people will never gather in one place to watch 11 and 12 year olds play basketball, or football. It was an amazing thing to see.

...

The Lede

SAN BERNARDINO -- And then content ...

...


"I buy the ingredience
and they make the meal,"

Oregon Little League coach
after his team was eliminated.

"Today, I went to the grocery store
and bought the wrong ingredience."

"I keep telling the kids
that we're on the Little League freeway,"

Idahoan coach.

"And there's an exit somewhere up here,
we don't know when, but it's coming."

Redlands, CA
8/13/2010

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Asian Nations

Abbreviated names of Asian nations
ruin the way I say them

like a drop of a word in a child's broken speech
it falls off the tounge in awkward

jarred
uncomfortable

ways.

Riverside
Aug. 10, 2010