FOOTBALL, Texas — A blur of blue motion.
The crack of helmets and stiffened grunts mounting one on top of another into shrill shrieks of the crowd, a tempest-rising coral-bed of voices, waves crashing together, sea and shore ripping hands, a thousand-million microdots of color pixilated, rasterized, and shot out into a billion flaming directions, into space itself, as discrete bundles of energetic gods.
I sigh sitting fifty-yard-lined and smile, This is war.
Leathered helmets and weapons lobbed into enemy lines. Clouded breaths gathering on steel-winter days. Even Napoleon shivered in St. Petersburg, the horses tamping their feet in meter. Armour-fitted knights steaming in the ripe, frigid sun. Rumbles of thundering horsehooves as metal enemies clash cymbals together. A demolition derby of bodies.
Monday afternoon men brush-stroke their wives’ hair in tender adulation after rolling over on grenades the night before.
Crime must be high in Buffalo this year.
Catharsis. Medics in oxygen tents wait sidelined for the grisly feast to ensue and cast off torn-ligamented, ripped-kneed survivors of another Sabbath’s holy terror. Lions and Christians and beers, oh my.
One hundred thousand Roman coliseum worshippers skipping service, arriving late, tithe to the brilliantly lit cathedrals of pain and Christ-on-the-cross halftime shows.
We all died a little for your sins, today, some gentle giant limps as he shadows down the long, dark alleyway of gray gum, spit and spirits raining beer in showers.
Some never heed the two-minute warning.
A rifle cannonade of rib-shots and bull-gorging fists, blood-brushed elbows. Black-and-gold bruises on purple faces, royal colors with dignity. Banners streaming, slipstreaming. Fifty-million dollar saviors raining fire and judgment on third-down conversions.
Out shuffles the congregation, shell-shocked and weary.
There will be blood on jersey highways tonight.