Why are basketball courts so hard?
Grey unyielding gravel, mixed with sand.
How elusive is dirt!
My feet skate on the path,
Young soles,
And gravity, is the logical conclusion.
Baskets, empty, broken;
Balls deflated,
Constructed structures cannot have souls without humans.
And yet this derelict one,
Has mine.
From underneath the broken basket,
The sky looks so blue.
With a ring,
Or a noose if I've been left the other way.
My own personal Sun,
Or my respite.
Sometimes, the other Sun coincides to fill the basket,
Ringed ball of fire,
Blue rays abound.
It burns.
There's craters in the gravel,
Half the court is overgrown with weed,
And half the remnant of a more innocent fun.
The mid court line of the court is the referee,
For once you cross over,
You can never switch sides.
I haven't crossed over yet,
But this side isn't incorrupt anymore.
Did you know the world looks very different to the basket?
High above, a solid 10;
No man meets its height.
Connected by its neck to a metal body;
It has no eyes, but a wide, very hungry mouth.
Greedily devours basketballs,
water balloons, bricks
And of course, small sized boys.
This basket and the ground beneath,
Know me for the past 4 years of my life.
Still reaching only 4 out of the basket's 10.
Maybe I haven't outgrown the game yet,
Or maybe I just need to switch sides.
Countless afternoons spent crunched within the basket.
Because once stuffed in the ravenous hole;
There wasn't a way to retrieve.
A human shield for the the structure,
Bricks, balloons, large stones;
Hit me before they could reach it.
Many a evenings spent lying below the basket,
Dirt, gravel and blood,
Smeared on and underneath.
Gazing at blue skies of freedom,
Are they really free?
Or are they bound by the circles of structure?
In pain,
Often eyes are the only thing we can move freely.
So, maybe my eyes are the circular limit to the sky.
But now I'm tired of bearing the pain,
My spirit, unlike my nose, isn't broken yet.
It's time to switch sides.
From this side,
The court looks strangely darker,
Convoluted with sudden overgrowth,
Soft ground, muddy feet.
How do we define ourselves,
Amid this taller, foreboding, dense foliage?
And now it makes sense,
To seek out the comfort of the gravel;
Spread muddy feet on the ground.
Used by and to the convolutions of this side,
The vast gravel is like a canvas.
To be painted with another's pain.
Find another,
Bully another,
To feed the basket,
To see the truth of rigid, binding circles in the blue sky.
Maybe then we'd be finally retrieved,
From the clutches of the basket.
