the morning slips under a milk spill on blue carpet sky a sun-cloud cocktail of strange taste and feeling   a dim world where shadows brighten, this dusk-daylight when the nocturnal open an eye and the diurnal let an eyelid slip   stuck in this muted interface the world is gray, quiet and I’m grounded as the hours pass inside a blanket-covered mirror   ooooh   but then the sun bursts forth   some things run and hide others look up at the sky   I am suddenly cleared for takeof

it should be someone not so enamored with her fat yellow smile because in person, they’d be crushed by her looks   a dusty colorless face, so pock-marked with boulders rocks and sharp bony ridges  even a facelift wouldn’t help   I do know exactly where I’d sit to write – where the scalding heat and bitter cold meet at the edge of a moon’s new day   with the universe of stars held by one eye, the peak of the sun captured by the other   and the message would have to be well bey

six teams eight 5th-graders each two or three with talent the rest slow, shy, uncoordinated or hating to be there   as captain, I played every kid in every game, mixing in the good ones with the non-athletic   other teams used their best players every minute of the game, ignoring their feeble teammates,   where we played as a team the weak and strong together everyone to the best of their ability   and something amazing happened   we won the basketball title that year   I did