Comparing My Death to Those of Justice and Vallejo

I died in Denver just as impending rain became realized.

In retrospect, it's a surprise the Cubs and Rockies weren't delayed

and no surprise Sammy Sosa hit two homeruns.

I died on my way home from a matinee

like Vallejo, on a Thursday.

Dressed like my friends, who were drinking on the patio

of the Falling Rock just blocks away from Coors Field,

fetal raindrops hit my exposed skin like glass needles as I

motorcycled away from beer-fueled debates on the day's baseball.

I lived twenty-nine with no intent to see past thirty.

I was dead. Blood, red as the STOP sign I had run,

sponged into the black macadam of Mariposa Street.

Wailing emergency vehicles mourned my passing

convincing aquamarine strangers to halt my dying.

I died on a Thursday-not as valorous as Vallejo.

I died in the rain-not as judiciously as Justice.

Like the Colorado Rockies,

my next baseball game was not in Denver.

And, unlike their poetic corpses,

I have turned my death into verses.