Boys Dream Poem by Todd Garland

Sleep’s statistical clutters quicken
desiderata of schedules wanting—
hegemony from standings trumpeting
triumph and trophy consummating…
in the arc of a completed pass…. A boys dream
scores symphony of self and other from the
argument of offense and defense—scores epic
antinomy from line and territory—scores world-song
from cosmic struggle directed by generals—
but fought in trenches by Trojans in armor
sheathed—and enshrined…by warrior-gods whose
jersey cerements retire in the Valhalla fame—the sacred
relics of ground offenses, of long-bombing air attacks—
defiance heroic to blitzes by defensive backs.

A boys dream lives by his helmet but dies
on the sidelines—and after a close game
when his father said “I’m sure glad they
they didn’t put you in”. A boy’s dream
dies in a shame that wouldn’t acknowledge
his own little brother’s calls from the crowd—dies
under Friday night lights when the sun stood still
over his home town— still…like the eye of God
scrutinizing each secret inch of his sodomizing
soul— still…before the immensity of nature
and the psychedelic dissolution of self
into every musky spoor of this clayey earth—
this broken and bloody battlefield—
the body of the hero that became the world.