My heart belongs to you Mickey Mantle,
flask in your locker, knees of knotted pine,
launching rockets from either side,
sweating yourself sober in center field,
eyes still crossed from last night’s bender.

We wore fedora hats
and ate nickel sandwiches,
played johnny-on-the-pony
and pitched copper pennies.

Like you, I promise nothing.
To a house blistered by ice I bring
a season of heat,

He must have hated this ground
or maybe loved what he feared.
Every brush stroke seems to whisper,

Today, Yousef, I am not with Hamas
Nor with Fatah, Hezbollah, Taliban or Al Queda.
Don’t mistake me for a man of conscience

I try to picture myself as
the better man, one whose
heart never picks yesterday’s
pocket,