Cup Ball

Sometimes, I think it would be nice to go back to when I was eight years old, when all those boys and I would play cup ball by the baseball diamonds, as I waited for my brother's Little League game to be over.

Do kids play cup ball anymore? I suppose they do, one way or another. But I can't imagine that the cup balls they create could compete with the sturdy, thick cups we used back in the eighties.

That's right! I'm talking about the nineteen hundred and eighties. Wow! No wonder those chaps roared into the twenties, blinded to the darkness from the incandescent bulbs that make daytime in the night streets of Paris and New Orleans, forgetful of Whitman's dark, wrinkled eyes (God bless you, Allen Ginsberg).

Here, in the twenty-first century. Here we are, in the actual future. The future they dreamed about, those who came before us. They who created dictaphones from imprints of typewriter die through indigo-dyed ribbons, as we did with the cup ball.

Here is a description of a cup ball created in the eighth decade of the twentieth century:

1. It was made from a wax-lined paper cup the municipal park's concessions stand had purchased from a local restaurant. They were white, with the Hardee's logo printed in orange on the top.

2. The wax-lining is very important. You can't make a good cup ball out of a solo cup (neither red nor blue). First of all, the cups would just crack when you tried to crush them up, and they are impossible to use to form using the "snowball" method, described below:

3. This is the method used to make a cup ball. I am calling this method the "Snowball Method." Another method is the "Crush-N-Stuff Method." It produces an lighter cup ball with less inertia. It also hurts the palm less when the palm slaps the cup ball.

SNOWBALL METHOD:

1. Crush a cup.
2. Place the crushed cup into an uncrushed cup.
3. Crush the uncrushed cup.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the crushed cup no longer fits into an uncrushed cup.

4. This is another method used to make a cup ball. I am calling this method the "Crush-N-Stuff Method." Another method is the "Snowball Method," which was previously described. It produces a heavier cup ball with greater inertia. It also hurts the palm more when the palm slaps the cup ball.

CRUSH-N-STUFF METHOD:

1. Crush the top of a cup.
2. Stuff the crushed end of the cup into the top of an uncrushed cup.
3. Crush the uncrushed cup and crushed-top cup together.
4. Stack one or two additional cups on the ends of the semi-crushed cups and crush them together

So the wax, you see, was really important to this process. It made the paper more pliable, shiny, flexible like leather. And when you could crush ten or fifteen cups into one thick, dense missile that would leave welts in the palm of your hand when you slammed a homer over the short fence of the dirt horse track that encircled the ball diamonds where your mother watched your brother play third base, dressed in long green baseball pants with a yellow stripe running down both legs to the yellow stirrups that we wore for no apparent reason. He wore a shirt, too. Never mind that it was the same color green as the pants, not a kelly green, or a hunter green or a turquoise, chartreuse, or jade. Just green! Dark green, perhaps, and emblazoned in thick, yellow screen printer's ink across the nylon chest of the shirt of my brother's Little League uniform was the name of the sponsor of his team: Elks.

My mother sat in the stands, a couple dozen yards away from where we played cup ball, and I am sure she remembers watching me. But I have no memory of seeing her, nor looking for her. All I remember is the feeling of eternity dancing beneath my cleats in the hard clay, in the long, humid afternoons of the midwest in the summer under the watchful eyes of my mother, who brooded over her sons.

The Raccoon's Tale

Once there was a raccoon named Dale. Dale lived in a tree with his mother, Sonja, and his mother's sister Dorothy. Together, the three were company.

Early one autumn, Dale was irritated at the thought of spending a seventh winter cooped-up with his mother and aunt, so he climbed down the trunk of the tree to the forest floor below. When he arrived on the ground, he was greeted instantly by a young human boy of about 10, who, armed with a crossbow, made short work of Dale and procured for himself material for his first coon-skinned cap.

Incidentally, the hunter, whose name was Jerry Kocher, lived to be an old, old man, and he wore the cap made from Dale's skin each day during the cold winter months of January and February in Southern Illinois, and occasionally, on cool mornings in early June.

Poems I Write When My Children Face Death

I like writing poetry when,
As in times like these,
I can close my eyes for a long time,
My fingers resting on the flat, smooth keys,
Inhaling as wind blows through window cracks,
And Jorge Luis Borges enters the room
To swirl within my lungs.

I wear poets as masks,
I, obfuscation of self,
I, projection of other:
I AM, Wallace Stevens
I AM, The Emperor of Ice Cream
I AM, That I am.

The greatest commandment is this:
Love the Lord, &c.
The second is like it:
Love your neighbor, &c.
And I ask myself: Who is my neighbor?
He says, "Let me tell you a story, &c," which ends up going like this: That other dude with the religion you don't like saved your ass and paid the bill.

The Hen's Tale

Once there was a white chicken. Because she was a female, the farmer called her a hen. This hen seldom had thoughts, but instead poked her head about all day looking for things to peck at.

One day, she noticed that she had been sitting upon an egg, and she became quite broody about it all.

This continued for a time until Farmer Benny, delighting in the Miracle of Providence, cooked her in a stew of noodles and served her upon a heaping mound of real mashed potatoes and instant stuffing for Thanksgiving Dinner.