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The Game

Merino and Johnson
can't seem
to get along you can see it
the way they scowl
at one another on the sidelines each
man trying
to exercize his power, stretch
his authority to dethrone
the other, and Jesus it's snowing and blowing
shit all over
everybody on the field so blurry now
you can't tell who is who, but it's only a game you say
why are they all going crazy
only a game   
little boys running around chasing the football
chasing the years
back to those November afternoons sun bouncing off
the shelf cumulus stacked up in a sky so bright it makes you giddy
so why all this bickering and maneuvering 
the x's and o's these old pros try out on one another 
it can't be
just the money, but it can't be just
for fun either and that is what is so incredibly 
stupid
why it punctuates the playoffs 
like a freshman's exclamation point like a bearded moron joke 
you can't laugh at anymore
why Jimmy Johnson 
is such a control freak and has to give all the orders 
conservative and well-thought-out with no room for a crazed genius
like this madman Marino 
calling a pass on fourth and ten which makes
JJ so angry he can't speak but somehow unnerves him too 
as he comes to realize 
like all the fading ghosts before him like Landry 
Lombardi 
like God himself perhaps
that the person to whom he can say the least 
is the one he will come to love the most

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