Not your world, mine....

Today
I went to a parent meeting
for a youth football league...
Now certainly, I never played football
in my youth, I was this
frail toe headed
white boy,
naive and insecure
and the sport never had any attraction
to me, for obvious reasons--
and knew this was to my fathers
disappointment, who wanted
an athlete, and got a rebel...
Today though, I saw the
ingredients to all this
a mish mash of men living vicariously
through children, and
jocks wanting their kids to be jocks,
to share in in that raw
feeling that only comes from
pure ego adreneline, pride pumping blood
that first formed on the battlefields
in victory,
now reproduced on some dried grass
field of a distant desert high school
and these are just kids,
just recently babies,
they still cry when someone says
something mean,
and just enough blood forms on
those little scrapes
that came a dime a dozen in my
childhood,
Large black men,
skinny tall white dads,
stocky, marine hair cut
drill seargent types,
jock of the year
circa 1995,
now, just trying to bring to life
all that we think we need to feel normal
in this nowhere desert place,
when really just perpetuating
the cycle
of egocentric aggression
fueled by all that makes us not normal,
that makes us into killers, politicians,
polluters of social balance...
And me, I stand around,
faded levi 501s,
old, sagged, cause they're
thrift store too short,
chain wallet,
skater shirt on out of my element,
they look at me,
they knew my kind,
back then,
they talked shit to him in lunch aisles,
hit him in the face
drunk at parties,
bumped into him in the hall
on their way to history,
or to meet a group of friends just feet away, laughing.
Now, I invade, I am the enemy,
and maybe because they know I might inject
something into all this
that threatens them,
threatens all they felt then,
want to feel now,
stronger, bigger, faster
when really just ignorant
just the foot soldier in front
who gets the arrow through his skull
in first five minutes of battle,
while I command you from some underground
concrete bunker
protected, and safe...
Yeah, that's the reality of it all
like or it or not
jock fucks
and this makes me smile,
this makes it tolerable for me
to be there,
and my boy of course,
who just wants to be a part of something
just wants to be accepted,
commented on
told he did well,
he will know,
he will know the truth
and never be sucked into
their world, but stay a part of mine.