My Football Poem

After 4 hours and 4 radio stations I've blindly given my email address to in hopes that one would carry the game internationally, I've finally stopped at KTRH in Houston who, after raising my hopes to the very brink of fruition, has just informed me I'll be able to enjoy the Aggie game in a mere 60 days.

This poem is dedicated to the game played December 27th, the radio station that will bring it to me, and the only Aggie shirt Jason Coggins has ever owned that I am wearing now in celebration of him and his beloved alma mater.


People don't write poetry about football,
They cross-stitch poetry about football
They bake it into brownies sold outside cold football stadiums
wearing the pictures of their homecoming queen or pimple-faced flautist,
oversized mug-shots of their children's incarceration.

People don't write poetry about football
Not because football is too aggressive,
but because poetry is too aggressive.

Poetry wants to cut, to slice, to rip with alliterative teeth.
Football wants to kick, to catch, to charge,
To shake hands afterwards.

Poets don't shake hands.
Poets don't win.
We don't leave the field.

We know there is no field,
and if there ever was...

We would have plucked it up blade by blade years before the ball was thrown.


(well, that was certainly an odd little poem)