Baseballoween!
The Vumpire
He only works night games.
His signals are creepy.
When managers argue
he makes them feel sleepy.
He never appears
in the photos we snap.
A widows peak peeks out
from under his cap
when he takes a nap
in the dugout.
His eyes bug out
and he hisses like a frightened cat
at the sight of a broken bat.
How weird is that?
Once, while waiting on deck
I caught him staring
at the back of the catcher’s neck.
Calef Brown - drawger
But Debt
Everyone around me’s got a crisis of their own -
can’t pay their student loans, can’t afford to keep their home.
I can’t solute my flag as a symbol of this nation,
with the hating, and the fighting,
I just see red, blue, and division.
I wake up at night and hear the sidewalks scream,
“Our American dream is tearing at the seams!”
But for my brother and me there’s no recovery-
no plan, no system, no bailout for the people-
Tighten your belts, keep faith, look ahead
(though you’ll be paying off the mistakes that your parents made
until your dead and rotting and they can’t afford to bury you).
In Detroit, the morgues have no vacancy,
the children don’t have the love they need -
did you hear that they asked kids to bring toilet paper to school?
Not just books and pencils, but lightbulbs, too.
We’ll never fix this country if we don’t protect our future,
education is a vital sign, we’re flatlining, we’re failures
to the ones we should look out for, who look up to us.
When you ask them in ten years what stuck
what will they say?
The protests? The music? The battling talking heads?
How many billion dollars to banks and cars that didn’t do a damned thing
for any of them?
When we stop learning, we stop living,
and without access there is no right to knowledge.
We can’t expand our minds if there’s no one there to teach us,
so stop rewarding GM’s CEO and motivate our teachers.
Give them books, give them desks, give them computers and a stage!
Art’s the first thing on the chopping block,
creativity loses to standardized testing.
Flash forward a hundred years to a world without dancing
or painting or singing or movies.
The business defeated the craft and now we’re left with nothing.
But debt.
I am proud to welcome aboard brooklynmutt’s newest contributor, Rose Dalton
“I told you
I love you
You were afraid
it was the heat
of the moment
I could pour
my emotions
let you
bathe in them
Surely know
fluid feeling for you
is far from physical
Let opium fragrance
carry you above
fields of doubt
float gracefully over
stagnant ponds
Find me in meadows basking
in the aura
of your soul
Light upon me
Melt into one
fullness felt
before with you
Take my pollen, butterfly
Caress my stamen
with silken wings
If ever you sense
sweeter syrup
in flowering fields
never regret
spread monarch wings
against the azure sky
I will always be
part of you.”
