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Los Angeles Coliseum
(One cannot ignore imposing things)
On a sunless day,
when smog turns sky
to navy grey,
Looms a giant aircraft carrier
come to rest in rooted drydock
for the last time;
the pressbox is its superstructure,
the flags its signal pennants,
ghostly whispers of yesterday's
heroic ocean battles.
In the dry months
the arc that faces south
Is a massive dam
Brimming with fresh water
for the valley,
husbanding potential green and orange
(the carrier, dry no longer,
is wet now on the wrong side).
At night, when the lights wash
their glare over the sides,
I walk around the outer wall
of a powerful prison
Restraining men like sailors
on an endless cruise;
men who have walked alone too often
now lock step to cold cells,
their dreams of flight
parked like planes on a carrier deck.
At times, however, when my day
has been hard and cruel
and my nights restless and cruel also,
I see a stadium steaming,
moist with saltwater
from the pores of players
maturating in T formation,
Changing slowly and terribly
into carrier captains and criminals,
destroyers and builders of dams.
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