Chapter Three: The Great American Game

Dear Diary, Grandfather's creaky as his front porch

Loads his shotgun beneath the awning, spittoon restless for rain

Carpenter's chair against the whistling air

Rocking, back and forth, rocking snap shot picture -

Worth it, just like the movies

She said that he loved baseball, and James Earl Jones

Said that he's got God talking inside of his thoughts

While he's rounding those bases on his way back home

If you build it, they will come

(And baby listens to what the Lord say)

But I've been getting pretty worn, building for nearly a decade

In a perfect world

We shouldn’t have been allowed to lose sight of what it means to love wholly

I’ve got a Polaroid hanging on my wall

That a friend took of me and my angel

I remember the day like it’s something I can touch

But it’s stuck in the square between the borders of the film

And I can run my fingers over our faces

But I can’t get back to the places we were

You’ve got a pain deep in your bones, son

It compels you forward like you’re tied to a slave master’s cruel hand

And it's the same pain that drives that oppressor’s heart of stone

So you’ve grown to love the man

You keep pouring yourself out, again and again

Into legible lines through a crooked pen

Yeah, it’s painful, but it’s familiar –

So habit breeds comfort, and I don’t know what I’d do without him

So in the early morning

When you’ve fallen asleep in our home

I drift back into the memories that I’ve claimed as my own

And wonder if tonight will be a night I’ll hang on my wall

Like I did before we stopped taking photos

Out of the habit of being comfortable with not trying at all

In a perfect world

We’ll have albums labeled Seasons with chapter headings

And we’ll staple them to the cork-board that hangs at the foot of the bed

There’s longevity in a memory spilt out in pen

And if a picture is worth a thousand words then I’ve written down every one of them

I work hard, scarred

Toil through that soil for the youth I see in my friends

But these journals are moments in time

Snapshots of our lives, and in retrospect

Age is an overexposed photo that the memories can't mend

I know my sweet seductress, and her name is Depression

I wrote best beneath that demon’s destructive oppression

In those Polaroids, she drove the ink into the canvas

Like a slave beneath his master’s cruel hand

And I hated that whip, but always wondered what I’d do without it

So I grew to love the man

Oh, I wept for change!

I begged for movement and the good Lord, he answered my prayers

But you don’t know how to breathe easy when you let go of your habits

Even if your comforts left you gasping for air

Dear Time

Grandfather's as creaky as his front porch

Scent like oil in the gun barrel

Dip-can kicked over the railing

Sandpaper hands stuck behind thumb tacks on my wall

I’ve got an ache in my chest for every season I miss

And it gets worse when the snow starts to fall

There are butterflies alive in that couple’s eyes

A few years since forgotten by all

And sometimes, if the phone starts to ring

I can still hear their wings when you call

But I begged for movement and I got what I asked for

And I can picture the answer like it came yesterday

And in the land of the gods, I think that things are timeless

But we are still prone to decay

You know I still lift up hope of certain smiles in those photos for us when I pray

Time is a cruel lover, and she breaks her house apart at its bones

You know comfort is no good reason for standing still

And idle hands build nothing that you can call your own