Late Peaches

New Poetry Anthology, Late Peaches, Sacramento Poetry Center, 2012 will have a second reading, Saturday, October 20 at the Antiquite Maison Privee, 6:30-9:30.  My poem, Cause of Death: Child Abuse, for James Humphrey (1939-2008) written 5 months after Jim's death, was accepted by the judges to be included along with 115 other poets from the Sacramento area. 


Cause of Death: Child Abuse

No safe-haven
when baby
infant
or
teen

Cause of death: child abuse
camouflaged  by
cardiopulmonary arrest

Didn't believe in suicide

Did believe a miraculous pain remedy out there
able to take lifelong suffering away
preventing accomplishment to become
acclaimed brain surgeon
renowned scientist
award-winning pianist
or
to finish stint with St. Louis Cardinals

Wanted to
live
life
to
fullest!

Fulfill destiny:
be greatest slugger of all time &
build a ranch for abused children life self

Gave as naturally
& easily
from
healthy
broken
heart

Pain into Performance

My qualifications for writing this blog is that I lived with the "greatest writer of his time," and as William Saroyan once told Jim  (50 years a writer), "Be of your time and if possible a little ahead of your time."  I invite you to see for yourself if what you read on Jim's site isn't that--timely and could have been written today.  Secondly, I am of the wise.  Hopefully I can express some of that wisdom.

It's baseball season's end and as a career in baseball was Jim's ultimate dream, I want to share his never ending dream.  While he was in indescribable pain up until his death, he wisely used his triumph from when he was a "champ", a "natural", a record-winning hitter, right fielder and clean-up batter during his youth, he never stopped getting into shape, making comebacks, and believing he could still play the game at age 62.  He transferred his pain into performance.  The principal of a major high school where Jim taught creative writing in the "Poets in the Schools" program (National Foundation for the Arts) asked him once while working out with their baseball and track team, "the record you hold for being the fastest quarter-miler was that fast because you felt your abusive step-father was chasing you, right?"  No, Mr. Kelly, my time would have been even better had I not been beaten because I would have had the proper shoes and the freedom and that love for running that sportsmen have.  Always, it was a life of sacrifice, giving up his dream and writing about his dream coupled with breaking the cycle of child abuse.  He could not watch a modern day baseball game as he knew "the score"--how overpaid the major league players were and how they didn't seem to earn those dollars on the field.  He was from a different time, a different place, a different script.  "Come babe!"