The Banter

Oh, Life, lay down, let go.

All your marble burden, most of all,

and your struggle and liquor, least of all.

Oh, These Days, and how they crumble,

and how it’s all a damn shame and filled with circus smiles.

All else is romance and lullabies and burnt coffee,

dirty thresholds, if anything,

but so worth the grave writ and word.

The wordless coffin writes upon the grave

a gaze of mindlessness and all meanings in love and life.

Or the absence of.

The scent of absence overcomes all the saintly reasons we exist,

leaving us wishing.

I am left wanting. All wanting takes days and days and days.

I believe it is hard to breathe.

I just want more breathe.

And more time.

And less damn shames.

I am: so much

not a lot

a bit of it all

bullet-ridden and criss-crossed with discretion and mezzanine imagination

sleeping.

I am going to sleep

going to see you later

sleep with you later

I am we

are so much

dieing

feel like I might

soon enough or not at all

I am going to live forever for ever

in and around infinity

infinite and gazing towards wherever ever ends.

going to wait forever for you

I am lieing

living

no, just lieing.

I am honest

not sure what truth there is

going to have to deal with

I am stuck: on you, you’re great

on death

I am sure it happens

not sure how

does a life die

or get up and walk away?

I am my grandfather

he’s dieing, I s’pose

or else just moving on to whatever’s next.

I am sure I will do the same.

going to miss him

going to write him a letter telling him who to say hi for me

in heaven

I am positive there is no heaven

this is heaven

I am the angel of some long dead soul living in there idea of heaven

I am going to make my heaven more stable

where money replaces rain and cigarettes cure cancer

I am going to make this life mine, I promise.

leave it all behind, I swear.

myself.

behind.

smoke ‘till I die

drink ‘till I drown.

I am drowning.

I am telling you.

I am drowning.

done

gone

going to stick it out

just playing.

I am so lucky.

I am telling you.

I am so lucky.

I am in love with love

with sorrow

the color blue

blood

I am

my blood

is blue

with melancholy.

I am getting up and walking away on a whole other level

and transcending my existence

and going nowhere.

I am the reflection of a windblown mind

of my mother’s soul

my father’s dreams

of my own apocalypse

drifting in and out of time.

I am watching time sway in the stars

the way falling in love sways in our arms

in and away from time

I am unaware of where time exists

I think it’s everywhere all at once

I want to say time doesn’t exist

but it has to

or else I wouldn’t be a quarter of the way to being dead.

I am

my family

is breaking apart

is all I ask for

putting the pieces back together.

I am going to make it

no matter fucking what

I am going to disappear

like moments into memory

My moments are lost

into some steam of conscious posody rants

I am living because of words on a page

and smoke from a silver

and coffee from neglected labor

dharma from moonlit daydreams.

I am

you

are the Messiah

but only in your eyes.

I am forever

but only in your eyes.

I am not in control of my own clarity

That can’t be normal.

But I’m so quiet about it.

I suppose everyone else is, too.

I am in awe of the life ahead.

of how quickly life is over.

I hope it’s mixed with struggle and bliss and champagne and sex.

I’ve been thinking that

I would die when the last word is written,

it’s just a feeling,

so I’m going to go ahead with my last breath.

Whether you are over it or not, I don’t give two shits what opinions people have on Lebron’s career stain “The Decision”. He’s 25. He wanted to do what he does best with his good friends in a city that appreciates basketball almost as much as glamour. I imagine I will make certain decisions that require emotional levels of upheaval when I’m that age as well. Of course it won’t be a nationally televised event that leaves a whole city in a state of desperation. At least they still have Colt McCoy. Nor will it be followed by unnecessary amounts of over zealous celebration, but that is besides the point. Lebron will get his rings. At least three. The Heat and The Bulls will be the Spurs and Lakers of the new decade. But that’s a different article for another time.

Here is where I get angry. Not so much angry, but a feeling that I am missing something vital to my well being. I watched MJ. I was seven, but I followed the last Bulls three peat with my father. I was blindly aware of the previous three, but never really comprehended the magnitude of Jordan’s achievements. I grew up in southern Kentucky. The NBA was a forethought to college basketball and was only truly spoken of when we wondered which player Pitino or Tubby would send to the big leagues next. Despite it all, we were half-hearted Bulls fans that would have been more supportive if we lived in a more supportive environment for the NBA. Point is, I now understand the greatness of MJ, but feel as though I wasn’t a true witness. Lebron has the potential to be the greatness basketball player, if not athlete, that I will ever see. And he is apart of my generation! Analysts will rip him all day for a chance to score a spot on TV showing that they know what exactly is wrong with Lebron. In the end, Lebron does basketball better than anyone else on the planet when he wants to be. That is where things begin to get murky. He finishes like Kobe. He passes like Rajon or CP3. His fade away is a thing of beauty. He spans the court with a speed and vision that is not human. I wish I could see him live. And he is so good, that he can turn it off. At any second. In any game. Whenever he wants.

Bill Simmons, of ESPN and his new grantland.com, said the moment things changed for Lebron in the Mavs-Heat championship series was in Game 3 when Dwayne Wade chewed him out in front of however many audience members and however many millions of television viewers. Maybe that’s true and I would tend to agree with that statement if it was any other player than Lebron. Bosh would have got discouraged. Wade would have tried to prove himself too harshly. Dwight Howard would have fouled out by that time. Kobe would try to put everything on his shoulders. Chris Paul would have suffered some career-ending injury. But Lebron is truly a social experiment. Never will we understand him because a lot of what he does seems to be a show. He is a character in his NBA play and then goes on being the nice guy that he probably is away from the media and the cameras and us whole-hearted bloggers. Those aforementioned players can’t turn “it” off, whether it’s due to sheer hubris or confusion or the need to win. Lebron has been carrying teams on his back for a decade now at a stage in life where most people are just learning to sustain themselves. The media has been bombarding him over how good he is since he was 14. Yes, he does need to step into that role. Yes, he did put himself into that position. But he has publicly said that the people of Cleveland expected too much of him. Maybe he doesn’t want to be that guy. Maybe he wants someone else to carry the burden of a close game with only a few minutes left. Maybe that is why he just stood there, touched the ball twice, and shuffled in and out of existence in the final minutes of Game 6 against the Mavs. I believe, out of nothing but to say I told you so, and certainly not out of bitter feelings, that Lebron made that useless three-pointer with three minutes left just to show he could when he wanted. That shot was nothing to him. He makes one like that in nearly ever game. But why couldn’t Wade step up and take over like MJ or Kobe would? Where was Bosh other than missing shots that he made every other time? And what about the other players on the team? The depth past the Big Three. Where was Haslem or Chalmers?

I know the issue is that Lebron has worn those shoes forever but never really filled them in to the point that other greats have in the past. Maybe Lebron never wanted that kind of respect. Maybe he is fine with simply being “The King”. The best pure basketball player alive and maybe ever. But being the champions that Duncan, Jordan, Wilt, Russell, and Kobe were isn’t something he is interested in as a player. Maybe. He wants the rings and he wants plenty of help getting them. That’s why he always knew he would end up with Wade and some other great player. That’s why he is a shell of himself when the moment he needs to step up finally arrives. He’ll help you get there, but in the end, somebody else needs to carry that burden unless the opportunity presents itself.

That’s why I, and so many other people, can’t stand Lebron at times. We are witnesses, but we will never get what we expected to see. In the perfect basketball world, Lebron would still be in Cleveland with a little more help than he had in previous. Maybe Bosh. Probably not Boozer. Maybe Stoudemire. Maybe some better point guard and a little more size in the paint. But the team would still be Lebrons. Cleveland, a city that now only stands behind Detroit and fucking Gary, Indiana in how depressing it is, would still be Lebrons. It would be the Cavs who played the Mavs and won in Game 7 after a 18 point 4th quarter surge by The King himself. Sure, he waited 8 years to win a trophy compared to Jordan’s 7. And yes, the Bulls would probably be the team to beat in the East (past the Cavs) during the rest of Lebron’s career. He wouldn’t have gotten six, but maybe four. Hopefully five. But that is all we would have needed to know that he truly is the greatest of our generation. Now he is the villain. A role which he seems to accept. Every championship he loses, Cleveland will laugh, followed by the fingers of a nation pointed in his face. Every championship he wins, people will say, “Of course he did with that help. How couldn’t he?”, but we will all be secretly happy. Imagine the day Lebron retires without a ring. I don’t want to. Not in the least bit. That day will hurt.

And lets stop the comparisons to Jordan. He’s not Jordan. He’s not the same kind of player Jordan was. That’s for Kobe. He’s Oscar Robertson who ate too much sassafrass for breakfast.

I’m Ben. From Kentucky. I write. I like sports, not Republicans. Let’s get right to it.

I hate baseball season until the Worlds Series and even then it’s become almost boring. Being from Louisville, my main choices as a baseball fan are the Cincinnati Reds and the Nashville Sounds. Why not the Louisville River Bats? Reread that question and take no longer than five seconds to deduce why. Until I hear a reason why we’re not the Louisville Sluggers, I will forever be bitter. I’m serious. I desperately need an answer to that. The nostalgia I feel even watching a baseball game live is soon drown out by how utterly unimpressive baseball can be eighty percent of the time. These days, slow and filled with underwhelming Top 10 plays from ESPN, are to be spent complaining about other sports. Or how much more exciting the supposedly over Steriod Era was than the more modern Years of the Pitcher. So I plan to do just that. Past expounding on the social ramifications of sports and their athletes, I just want to rant about shit that happened, is happening, or will happen in whatever sport I damn well please.