MONKEYSAYS

TENDENCIES (A process poem)

You know they’ve never lost. Never lost.
Well, never lost at home. At night.
In a playoff game. In December
At night in December. In a second round game.

When it was over 50.
Over 50.
Kelvin.

Kelvin. Kelvin. Kelvin. Kelvin Smith
Wasn’t he a wide-out for the Cowboys?

They didn’t call them that then.
They were all wide receivers. Or maybe wide ends.

The one who got into trouble.
Legal trouble. Nasty stuff it was.
Bad for the league.

Wasn’t he married to a showgirl?
One of those M ones. Marilyn. Monique. Mamie it was.
Or maybe Mansfield.

Anyway that wasn’t him. It was the other guy.
The guy with the blonde hair who wrote a book.

That’s right - it was Mamie. Mamie Van Doren.
She was a hot number in those days.

You’re thinking of the baseball player. The baseball player Belinsky.
Bo Belinsky.

I do remember him. A pool hustler from Tarrytown.
He threw a no hitter in L.A. Everyone loved him for a little while.

I always thought of that name. Bo Belinsky.
Bobo Linsky. It sounded like a fake name, like Bob White, or Bob O. Link
He was quite a character though. Quite a character.

He’s dead now.
They’re all dead. All those characters. Most of them anyway.
The ones that aren’t, they’re all down in Florida playing golf.
Playing golf and….


(to be continued)