Saturday, November 12, 2011

poetry corner (not a joke)

To keep things interesting, occasionally the broken men of Clear the Crease have been known to craft a behind-the-scenes wager or thousand. I'm tired of taking their money, though, and my liver won't stand up under too many more bottle-matching bets, so we've been roaming afield. A couple of Flames-roughly-dispatch-the-Avalanche ago, Bogdan von Pylon & I set up some kind of idiot bullshit whereby if his team won, I'd have to craft a sonnet for each of the goal-scorers.

And now I have. Because his team won. His team always wins. His team has beaten mine 7 times in a dog-killing row now. I hate Bogdan von Pylon, I hate the Calgary Flames, I hate the challenge of coming up with rhymes, and I hate you.

What we've got here, then is a failure to communicate probably the worst idea Clear the Crease has ever had. Sonnets devoted to Roman Horak, Lee Stempniak, and Rene Bourque. Enjoy. Sorry, everybody--we'll return to our normal strident agonizing without any rhyming real soon here.

Roman Horak, rookie, plenipotent
at least against the Avalanche
at least that night, his rodent's
face and stick on the power play spanked
our Darkish Lord (sorta), hard shot shanked
past our Goalie Varlamov, a backhand
in more ways than one. A shaky team blanched
in the face of this Calgary stand
and, as we shall see, apparently planned
to give up a few more goals,
letting the Flames' lead expand
before letting the third line roll,
rumble, score, and achieve. Too little
too late, Avs: you skate by night through Roman Horak's spittle.


The next hand of man to light the lamp
belonged of course to another Flame.
These men disappoint and fade, their names
never rating or resounding. They cannot set up camp,
Calgary Flames, in the Hockey Hall of Fame,
because by and large they suck. Iron grips clamp
the former team from Atlanta and they wank
endlessly now in Alberta, piling up mediocrities without shame.
Unless they play the Avalanche. Then the Flames burn
with frank excellence. Exuberant scores
meet stern defensive stops, and Calgary spurns
their normal slouching tendency toward loss.
Lee Stempniak absorbs a rebound, pours
a puck past Varly, and my stomach turns.


There once was a man by the name of Rene Bourque.
When he played the Avalanche, he really knew
how to play the game. Against the rest of the league he blew.
But 29 games (so far) against the Avs he has dined on pork
forking himself 13 fat-crackling goals
and another 12 helpings of assists for his mates.
Great. Terrif. Nice job. Your role
I guess is to stick it to my team, plate
up piles of production, use your Calgary Flames to roast
a tasty dish of my dashed dreams and serve
it to me cold, iced in fact. Curb
your appetite, Mr. Bourque. You boast
an enviable menu of skills--some nights, anyway, you disturb
my sense that you should suck. Tonight, though: please coast.

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