Poet in the Post: Dylan Thomas laments Amar'e Stoudemire & the New York Knicks

At halftime of their game against Cleveland last week, Charles Barkley felt the Knicks were so historically bad—and they are—that the occasion called for making up words to describe their offense. Instead of triangle he went with blu-blu, or something like that. The thing was, at the time, the Knicks were actually winning. They would go onto lose—and they’ve lost twice since—but at the time not all seemed lost. What makes the Knicks sense of badness so horrendous, however, is that this current group of players really hasn’t been anywhere of note, so this cannot be described as a decline. Furthermore, they’re not young enough for this time spent struggling to be taken as some painful crucible for the league’s future zeitgeist. They are, besides the occasional flair of wasted talent and unconceived talent, awful. 

Poet in the Post: Linsanity

Consider what's below my raw response to Jeremy Lin's game against the Lakers, while my post at TFT is the clarification:

Tornadoes rise like this out of cracks in the floorboards
and from underneath pantry doors--
crumbs swirling with dust bunnies and prairie dogs--
blowing down houses, tearing down power lines,
stripping paint off billboards, and wrecking Main Street:
smiling lightning and clenching thunder as it kills you
and then doesn't even take credit for the plunder.
How can such sudden winds rebuild a franchise?

Poet in the Post: The Heat of Crying

She told everyone I cried.
I don't remember crying,
but she said that I did.
She dumped me in fifth grade,
on the phone,
and then told all the other pony-tailed girls
that I cried like I was one of them.
I still don't remember the tears,
but I do remember being sad--
I remember being a sad, little fifth grader.

Poet in the Post: Yao Ming

Yao Ming's comeback recently got word of a major setback when it was reported he has a stress fracture. He will likely never play again, and it's a shame: 


THE POEM THAT WAS HERE HAS SINCE BEEN REMOVED, JUST KNOW THAT IT WAS BRIMMING WITH SADNESS OVER THE TRAGEDY THAT HAS BECOME YAO'S CAREER. HOW CAN A MAN SO BIG BE TAKEN DOWN BY SOMETHING SO SMALL?

Poet in the Post: Ode to Greg Oden

Greg, I hear your knees creak.
I hear that when you run up
and down the court
your hips and knees and wrist
creak like an old tree trunk

and that you've grown so stiff
you have to watch the world pass by
from an all-seeing folding chair;
men much older than you sprinting by,
like ravens, making you look
like some lost wanderer
who comes trolling the local gymnasiums
and playgrounds for spoiled youth.

I hear the children recognize you
by the limp of your five o'clock shadow.

Greg, I hear your knees creaked until they cracked,
and I wonder why you traded your eye
for wisdom and not new joints.

Why didn't you saw the legs
off your eight-legged steed
and strap them onto yourself
like a pair of Forrest Gump braces?
Isn't that what gods do--
make the crippled walk, dance, and leap?

How come you couldn't heal yourself?

Greg, how come your name
couldn't heal your body
and keep your sons from being so weak
that mistletoe could slay them?

I never understood a mythology
that teetered on top of a gimp tree
and the promise that the apocalypse
would come through the jaws
of a snake; I never understood
waiting on the end of the world
like one would wait for a mail man--

I never understood how jenga
translated into a religion.

Greg, I wish the world hadn't toppled you,
and that when we sifted through your ruins,
like piles of junk mail,
an ode to the new world had sprung forth--
full of exaltation--
rather than the exhausted lament:

we are the giants we were born to disfigure.

Poet in the Post: Manute Bol

As tall as you were--
seventy-eight inches
from head to toe--
it was difficult
not to appear
as a shepherd
anywhere.

Poet in the Post: Bob McAdoo

Bob McAdoo,

give anything to be a mac like you.

Heat up easy as cheese.