Dancing With Noah

Originally published on Hickory-High in March of 2014:

 

DeMarcus Cousins, Human Being

The Monster Child has risen from Alabama roots

Casting a bulking shadow from Mobile to Sacramento

There’s a trail of splintered courts,

Broken noses and bruised skulls (and tender groins)

From Lexington where the blue grass is rolled up and smoked in honor of Rupp or Pitino or Cal or Tubby just to pass the time

To the capital of Cali where the Sleep Train snores (or roars)

Carnage follows Cousins

 

Judgments rain down on the kid in the form of

Downpours of critiques from self-appointed protectors of

Unwritten old school codes of conduct

Scouts prognosticate:

“Emotionally immature, but…”

“A volcano waiting to burst, but…”

Mama and coaches counter-market messages:

“Passionate with a target on his back”

“He just wants to win so bad”

 

Let’s ride the DeMarcus Cousins timeline as it spins on its omnipresent axis

A merry go round born of tragedy and comedy

Alternating the fairytale of 23s and 13s

With the ether-laced fear and loathing of justified ejections

 

Stay put, the ride churns on, powered by an all mighty unseen source

With streams and reams and stacks and packs

Of double double stats

Offset by pitfall punches

Stupid suspensions

Avoidable activities and

Torrents of technicals

 

DeMarcus, the enigmatic legend of LeFlore High School

Who escaped Erwin in a cloud of gray unknowns while

Mama told all she was tired of DeMarcus being treated like a

Piece of meat

Kentucky meant Calipari meant college meant pressure

Cooking in SEC cauldrons

Too hot to keep cool, but cool enough for 15s and 10s

Sufficient for a one-way trip to Stern’s NBA where

Obedience is paid for in mounds of millions

An upside down world of do’s and don’ts

Where faucets run green with royal money

For men willing to abide by the assimilation into mass corporatization

 

Not a boy anymore

Not an object either

Not a commodity, an asset, or an asshole

Not a glass bowl

To be psychoanalyzed with

Psycho babble babble … father figure

Babble babble … own worst enemy

Babble fucking babble

23-year-old Alabama freight train

Run away run away run away

From it all

There’s nowhere left to run

Center court of center stage

In the middle

Under media microscopes

A good-becoming-great basketball talent

Anything else … is the

Wholeness of human gray

Between, beyond, beneath, beside

Good and evil

Giant human basketball player

With a capacity for the same beauties and empathies as the rest of us

It’s just DeMarcus, a man from Alabama who plays a little ball and goes by Boogie