Team sports
Televised and professionalized
Block voting
Mobs
Patriotism to the extreme
Allegiance, the scariest word ever
Waves
In Rome the factions were divided by color
For chariots
Or gladiators
And tangled in webs of corruption
Palatine Hill politics being as venal and sexualized then
As today
But what it comes down to
Is a great distraction
Emotional attachments to essentially nothing more than displays of uncommon skill
Microsecond reactions
Which help us forget the reign of terror
Absolutely
Lurking outside
At the gates
Which have started to shudder
David Trudel © 2013
Sports redux
at times all that’s left
is a retreat into sports
not relevant
at all
but as primal as ancient Rome
in wired arenas
when teams coloured in
screaming adoration
or dismay
become an Australian Blue Heeler
of collective heat
outstretched
pulling centrifugally
against your impulse to say
Stop!
in which there is no
enough is
no safe place under the bleachers
to watch it play out
until thumbs are
outstretched
David Trudel © 2013
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Tagged as blank verse, community, creative writing, football, free verse, poetry, rome, social commentary, sports, team sports