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Bob Costas and his pink eye infection.
NBC Olympics


In this installment, our poet looks at Bob Costas‘s pink eye infection, among other things.



Costas’ eyes have stayed pink, the jokes

too easy since pinko is old as eras are old

and Putin’s pink is the color of his steak,

though his connections to the sewers

and pipes plumb old depths and Costas

can’t be blamed for passing on the shower,

and going for the rag to wipe his eyes.


Americans are losing everything—this is

the march of almost arrivals and who can

blame them when whole villages of pain

impervious Norway folks hurtle over snow

as if born to this red-faced miracle of power,

while the normal Americans lose everything—

golds slipping away, silvers, bronzes—you know

their names, the parade of painful loss.


There is salt in the snow at the foothills

where the Jamaican bobsledders are shirtless

leading a limbo line through the subtropical

steam pot of Sochi of global warming.


The water is brown, it is not rum.


Everyone is a rainbow child, and on Sunday

the rainbow curved over the mountain,

and someone said, Hallelujah! then thought,

how ironic, how emptily ironic.


Luge sliders travel at eighty miles per hour—

they can die on these fragile bits of fiber glass

and this is why we howl with relief

at their arrival intact at the end of the run.


And in Raleigh the pile up is not a joke.


And on CNN, the Paul guy is making jokes.


And in Syria, remember, in Syria


A dog with a beard won the Westminister Dog Show


All isn’t well with the world.

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