Slam Dunk
There are these moments.
Hundreds of choruses, comebacks,
Trick endings that make one woman
With coiffured, red hair yell,
“But it can’t be his wife!”
Even bumper stickers that remind me
Of the scattered moments of childhood,
Of watching Disney movies,
Learning about human frailty from animals.
They remind me of the time in seventh grade
When Mike Peroutka called me a fag,
Because he beat me at basketball, and I
Didn’t have armpit hair,
And still didn’t like Nirvana.
When I was sixteen I dumped my girlfriend
After disagreeing about whether John
Or Paul was the better singer
Even though Paul sucks.
No big deal, the world kept turning
Around me. When I turned twenty
My grandpa bought me a book
By a French philosopher.
It said, “We are all an axis
For someone else’s rotation,”
So I decided to set sail for the end of the world,
But I landed right where it all started:
Baby teeth, cartoons, puberty,
My final Christmas to Tahoe with my grandpa
Before he died.
When I was eight he got me
A fire red Duo Sonic for Christmas.
A Duo Sonic is really a Stratocaster but
Intended for a child’s smaller hands.
He laughed when he first saw me
Wrap my hands around its miniature neck
And grip the first chord of “Louie Louie.”
Did he somehow know that one day
I would play “Agnus Dei” at his funeral?
That I would grow tall enough to slam dunk, but,
My fingers are still stumps.
Hundreds of choruses, comebacks,
Trick endings that make one woman
With coiffured, red hair yell,
“But it can’t be his wife!”
Even bumper stickers that remind me
Of the scattered moments of childhood,
Of watching Disney movies,
Learning about human frailty from animals.
They remind me of the time in seventh grade
When Mike Peroutka called me a fag,
Because he beat me at basketball, and I
Didn’t have armpit hair,
And still didn’t like Nirvana.
When I was sixteen I dumped my girlfriend
After disagreeing about whether John
Or Paul was the better singer
Even though Paul sucks.
No big deal, the world kept turning
Around me. When I turned twenty
My grandpa bought me a book
By a French philosopher.
It said, “We are all an axis
For someone else’s rotation,”
So I decided to set sail for the end of the world,
But I landed right where it all started:
Baby teeth, cartoons, puberty,
My final Christmas to Tahoe with my grandpa
Before he died.
When I was eight he got me
A fire red Duo Sonic for Christmas.
A Duo Sonic is really a Stratocaster but
Intended for a child’s smaller hands.
He laughed when he first saw me
Wrap my hands around its miniature neck
And grip the first chord of “Louie Louie.”
Did he somehow know that one day
I would play “Agnus Dei” at his funeral?
That I would grow tall enough to slam dunk, but,
My fingers are still stumps.