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Title Page & Licensing Notes
Acknowledgements
Contents 2
Poem Bale Two Regarding Horses Fast and Show
By Thomas M. McDade
Copyright 2013 Thomas M. McDade
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the following publications that have published many of these poems:
Abbey, Amaranthine Muse, Bean Feast, Bender, Bibliophilos, Brobdingnagian Times, Chance Magazine, Clark Street Review, Lake Effect, Lucky Star, Mushroom Dreams, Nerve Cowboy, Pawtucket Times, Pitchfork, Poet's Fantasy, Santa Clara Review, Slugfest, LTD, Sunken Lines
Contents
1) First Daily Double Memento
2) Mr. Whimsy
3) Knowing How To Die
4) Valley Café
5) Shelter Guy At OTB
6) Babe At The Belmont
7) Like A Charm
8) Landonoor
9) Sounds Of Wilting
10) Iceland
11) Portraits
12) The Clocker
13) Hustler Ballet
14) Music, Narragansett Park
15) Insurance
16) Position
17) Laurel Charger
18) Hot Tips
19) Royalty
20) Robinson Crusoe
21) Candles
22) Duke’s Gigs
23) Heroism
24) The Day Elvis Died
25) Clean Living
26) Rounding Up
27) Eight Ball
28) Sowing
29) Unfit
30) Exactas
31) Courtesy
32) Restraint
First Daily Double Memento
Daily Racing Form in my lap as crucial
as the Constitution itself I figured
and calculated speed
ratings and variants, averaged,
this that, what if and so what,
scrutinized workouts for hints
and hidden clues, pondered bloodlines
as if a Latter Day Saint.
The only racetracks I’d known
were my hometown Narragansett
Park and Lincoln Downs,
the Big A on liberty
off the USS Mullinnix
and the Charles Town oval on
an earlier shore duty jaunt.
This time I was on the wagon
with a pocketful of cash riding
a Baltimore bus to Bowie
that February Saturday in nineteen-
sixty-five and it was more exciting
than walking or running
and to the home fences,
armed with a pittance.
On the New York subway trip
I was foggy-brained celebrating
the age eighteen New York
drinking law; hitchhiking my way
to West Virginia paled too
as I’d passed for lush legal.
My historic daily double
coupled Footprint with Brown
Bulldog whose photo graced
the first Sunday Sun sports page.
I added a longshot winner
named Roman Battleship.
Coincidentally, bulldog-faced FBI Chief
Hoover presented the featured eighth race
trophy but to Tilmar’s people instead
of Exclusive Nashua’s.
(My dead last 6-1 choice!)
I often recall that day, temperate
and lucky, over 21,000 fans strong
and how for a change my spent Daily
Racing Form scrolled in my lap
remained as vital as the Declaration
of Independence that bus ride
back to Baltimore and onward.
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Mr. Whimsy
It was easier on emotions
with John in the urn
and not in the coffin.
The preacher said the eulogy
might ring false
since a photo was all
he had to rely on.
I peeked at the few faces
around me, AIDS doesn’t fill
pews like car wrecks or cancer.
Some mourners, folks always
whispered would never be much
weren’t made of the stuff
that makes liars.
A woman who’d OD’d
and survived 51 times:
an Ocean State record,
didn’t look any worse
for the trying.
I recalled splitting a horse bet
with John at Narragansett
when we were kids
on Mr. Whimsy, my first winner.
A newspaper story dawned on me
about sons scattering
their father’s ashes
across the finish line at Aqueduct.
I imagined John’s remains going that route –
what the wind missed horseshoe stomped
and framed for luck.
After the preacher noted things
and their seasons, a few of us lingered
by the chapel steps as if between
races at Narragansett,
when we were young and intent
on perfecting expressions and gestures
to indicate neither good luck nor bad –
as mourners we weren’t as sure how to act.
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Knowing How To Die
Preakness Saturday I visit
the bookie dying
too young.
Lung cancer the cause;
he’s refusing treatments.
Just want to say so
long and I regret
the extra sadness
of a bookmaker laid up
on Second Jewel day.
Sitting against a pillow
in bed intently
watching a Charles
Bronson movie
he looks healthy to me.
Holding a wait a minute
finger, he focuses
like a judge
at a famous film festival.
I ask if he wants me to
bet the big race for him.
He says no and we concentrate
on the flick which is exciting.
Last thing he says before
shaking hands goodbye
is that just the other day
Bronson lost his wife
to cancer.
The way he says that
last word carries
the same tone
as I remember hearing
when he’d named a horse
leading by ten lengths
pulled up at the eighth pole
that he’d held a wealth
of win bets on.
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Valley Café
The trumpeter who calls horses to Post
at Narragansett earns more backing
buxom women dancing off clothes
and sopranos belting out tunes
to warm up the crowds.
When a songbird is so good that no one bangs
bottles on tables or shouts
“Bring on the stripper,” he feels
like a Broadway musician.
Enter the Project kids who used to skip
school for the track and he’s back
at the races.
Nine times a day they cheered him
as if Satchmo.
No fences to scale or cops to dodge here:
show your leer and you’re legal
at the Valley Café.
When these lo
yal fans shuffle in
like new owners, it doesn’t matter
if a sweet bird he loves like a daughter is holding
a note she’s been chasing since birth
or a stripper is bumping and grinding
a fresh theory of motion –
“Satchmo” rises and blares the most exquisite
“Post Time” riff in the annals of racing:
Triple Crown events included.
Counting this gang the best field of colts
ever born, this trumpeter can’t help
but wonder why the hell not one
ever took up the horn –
got good enough to bless
or blame him.
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Shelter Guy At OTB
The shelter guy
uses money
from cashing
bottles and cans
to bet every horse
in the ninth
at Aqueduct.
He brags even if
the winner returns
less than his outlay.
But today he’s glum
even though he’s gained
four and change.
Staring at a spot
on the wall,
under a blasting
Yankee TV game
he looks like
he’s heard
the state’s pulling
the container
deposit law.
A commercial backed
by Roger Miller’s
“King of the Road”
halves his blues.
Smiling, he recalls
being a hit the same
year as the song.
His remembers
a stylish hat
that featured
a green feather
in its hatband
instead of a halo
of tickets
giving luck
a bad name.
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Babe At The Belmont
Driving Mike DeLeo and Bill Slager
to the Belmont Stakes,
I detoured off 287 to the Babe’s grave
as if hot tips were coded on the bats, balls,
gloves and trinkets that pilgrims left.
Being a Sox fan, I was grateful
for the tiny Boston batting helmet.
We paid our respects, didn’t linger,
then inched to the track and a crowd that
would have filled Fenway twice and a half.
Bill and Mike stuck with their triple systems.
I played my usual deuce to win on hunches
and an occasional exacta until the big race
when I put five on Lemon Drop Kid
who I’d been keen on since January.
He won, paid big, and Mike said, “My God,
the Babe called everyone, ‘Keed’.”
Bill didn’t take it as hard, pointed out a gal
who was a ringer for Linda Darnell.
Races over, we hung out, basked
in the accumulating quiet
An Alabaman on his way to Fenway Park,
noticed my camera, asked if we needed a photographer.
After he snapped, he let loose a bit of his life,
pitched in college but lacked major league smoke.
His late dad had been a Red Sox fan.
(Mike told him to look for the owners’ initials
in Morse Code on the