FIFA
A Jackpine Sonnet

elbows on the table
my hands clasped around
this soccer ball
I call my skull

its global reach
the totality of all
I hold and know
and understand

past games
long forgotten
gone the skills
of which I was so proud

my life the circumference
of this paneled circle
wrinkled and peeling

the ancient onion skins
of old corruptions
newly found

Comment:

Moo calls this painting, which he forgot to sign, Crater with Creatures. He thought it would be a good painting for this circular poem that also goes round and around like the creatures in the crater. Wild thoughts, they are, gnawing at each other as they circle. I had to tell Moo what FIFA meant. At first, he thought I had written FIFI, the name of his cat. No, I told him, it’s FIFA, not FIFI, and that’s why I call my skull a soccer ball. “But FIFA isn’t corrupt,” Moo said. Well, that made me laugh. “I wasn’t referring to FIFA as being corrupt,” I explained. “The corruptions are all my own.” “But you aren’t corrupt,” Moo exclaimed. “Think of them not as corruptions, but of little errors, little sins, the little mistakes we all make in life.” “Oh, those,” said Moo. “Nobody cares about those things. They are all little nothings, best forgotten.” “I usually do forget them,” I said, “but once in while I pick at them like I pick at a scab, and then they all start bleeding again, or flaking away like thin layers of onion rings.”

Moo looked at me, long and hard. “You are just like a world cup soccer team manager,” he told me. “First you pick your nose, then you pick yourself, then you pick your best friends and put them on the team. But that’s not corruption. That’s the way of the world. Everybody does it.” “Not everybody,” I said. “That’s because not everybody is a soccer coach,” he replied.

Good old Moo. Such a world wise philosopher. I remember when he had his index finger in plaster. “What wrong with your finger,” I asked him. “It broke,” he replied. “How on earth did that happen?” “Someone punched me in the nose.” “Well that shouldn’t have broken your finger,” I said, amazed and rather doubtful. “It was in my nose at the time,” he sighed. Que lo creas tú.