...football night in america...
...are you ready for some footeball?...
“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”
-Frank Zappa-
A spiked boot toe tips the freckled leather oval, end over end it flips through the sky above smashed gloved fingers topped on outstretched arms of tense stretchy muscle. The scruffy man to my right squelches delight. His team scored. Three points, another beer, a grin spinning as he sucks the foam water-bread through a graying mustache filter into his mouth.
The ecstasy is short lived but filling. A couple more sodas, half an hour of commercials selling nightmares and insurance. His team loses by ten. Disappointed. Entertained. Inebriated. Satisfied. He tucks today away and sleeps a week waiting for another. Another game. Another round. Another spiked boot toe tips the freckled leather oval.
The honestly dressed man to my left thinly smiles at the whirling colors spraying chaos across the walls. A ballet of balls and numbers in tight random order. He has no team. No affinity to be a part of something he isn’t. “I don’t care who wins” he says between toothy stabs of salty fried bird.
He watches just the same. The art is all around him. The cheers of Ted, Tom and Tony at the table near the neon window. The struck-strick-thwang of balls packing pockets on the pool table. Ten TVs talking. The pub is a symphony. The sport is just songs.
I’m stuffed in the middle whittling away at being middling. To my right is my right to fight. To believe in winners and losers. Every day is a chance to be better than someone else. Life in levels. Pyramidic pulse. To my left I can commit to non-committance. I can see all things as is. No difference in outcomes. No outcome at all. Life as a line, I will point to all points (perhaps without a point).
Ice clunks in a bucket, sweaty glasses filled with piss-hue wines. Rows of liar’s romance hiding crystal clear behind glass bottles. The bartender’s book is their brain. They make poems for the mouths of poets. They quote sadness with whiskey sours, drawing dreams with a dram of Dickel. The bartender is the manager of moods, a quote from The Bartender’s Bible. My mood is meandering. My mood is middle. My middle. Amen.
I compete without competing. Standing witness to the wild in places mundanely repeating. I see purple-yellow horny on helmets. I breathe in red-blue behemoth. Silver-black pirates steal me and pillage the desert. The locals pan for yellow-red gold next to an amusement park in a silicon valley.
Man made animals. Padded people pushing and shoving in huddled mush. Decades of the same fights finding old ways to be new. Another spiked boot toe tips the freckled leather oval. It misses its making. There are no points. The zero scores.
I wonder which which I am. Winner or loser. Neither or niether. I see me in the symphony. A puddle carried by the boot over dead stepped crimson carpet. A ten dollar cigar lingering on the mouth of the nose of the wind. I obsess with obstacles. I want to witness my witness. Show me myself, I say to myself. I say myself to myself. I say myself to you. Team and team again. Winner and loser.
My middle is paused. My middle is halved. The game is afoot. Pairs of them. The whistle should be louder. The purpose is pretend. To pretend is a purpose. We put on a play. When the game goes on, no quarter, no give up, what gets out, what comes out?
“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”
-Joe Theismann-
It is important, these sides. The containers hold us in place. We want war. We scratch and sniff. We stink. I can feel the field at twenty three to ten. I get the game. The point is pointless. As the kids might say, it's extra. Plus or minus, it’s odd and I’m spread. I figure I’m worth four out in the world and maybe more on Monday night.
The spiked boot toe tips the freckled leather oval. It’s always going in and out. A forgetful sex stain on the consciousness. Under black and blue light we share our bruises. We crowd. We crunch. We kick. We crack. We come.
I can see the bright flicker in person. Without a persona I am firmly detached to a loosely held ideal. The national anthem is a fight song for another time. It begins a game it can’t finish. Perpetuitous pretense. Scattered patterns. To my left I’m just a watcher. To my right I’m just a player. In the middle I toss coins. Heads or tails. Heads and tails. No quarter. No quit.
All my rowdy friends are coming over. Tonight we choose the narrative we’re given. Hand-me-down hats hold us tight in the arms of our preferred corporate mythos. Let the billionaire’s billiards scratch wins out on chalk lines. May they wash away with water and bathe in green gatorade. Cleansed by completion. Complete in competition. Neverending clash and krang and struck-strick-thwang.
The spiked boot toe tips the freckled leather oval. End over end it flips through the sky. To my right I choose war. I choose to fight. To my left I choose nothing. I choose to see. And here I am stuck in the middle with you. Their game. Our play. I can act now or I will always be my audience.
The spiked boot toe tips the freckled leather oval. It misses. I cheer. My team wins. How selfish the thought.
I too can’t give
anymooooOoOooOoooreee 🎶🎤
🫡
Way to go CansaFis. Nice Easter Egg singing riff lol.