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Tag: winning

The Fire Game: sonnet (Italian)

Published on July 8, 2025

The fire may turn to embers as we age,
its bright hot essence slowly turned to ash.
Our brave ideals disintegrate so fast,
and our youth’s passion melts to smoldering rage.
Perhaps that’s how we see beyond the cage
that we dismissed back then as balderdash,
imagining our noble, rebel clash
as more than just a temporary stage.

Now, hard against the wall, we find the flame
a gentler reminder of those days
when not to burn at both ends was a shame,
and looking out into the growing haze
we see there is no scoring in this game,
no matter which position someone plays.

08 Jul 2025

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What Is It: rispetto

Published on June 23, 2025

What is it that we try to do?
It seems the same old tired song:
me being right, and blaming you
when everything around goes wrong.

What good does that do anyone,
when neither side can win or lose?
It’s not enjoyable or fun
for either team. Why would you choose

to carry on in such a way?
Who likes to play this sorry game?
It seems a waste of a good day.
If we keep going, who’s to blame?

What is it that we want to be?
That seems a tired line
tied up with some great destiny.
But it is yours, or mine?

What difference can it really make,
if we don’t ever try to change?
Instead, let’s learn from our mistakes.
Together, it won’t seem so strange.

23 Jun 2025

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Virtuosity

Published on December 19, 2024

Is the solution
so simple and black and white
that you can tweet it?
Weighing in with your two cents
isn’t risking your money.

Is the right answer
pitting our us against them
in a blind fool’s game?
No one wins a war of words
without caring how you score.

Is this the moment
when we prove how right we are,
simply counting coup
to display our bravery
in a virtual showdown?

Is the solution
shouting at our enemies
until they go deaf?
Just being the loudest noise
is a hollow victory.

19 DEC 2024

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Does Somebody Win?

Published on June 9, 2017

Doesn’t seem to make much sense at all;
win or lose don’t matter in the end.
It’s a race that seems too close to call;
finish line’s just up around the bend.

Doesn’t seem to change much day to day;
up or down, they’re pretty much the same.
It’s an endless cycle, anyway;
good or bad, the blues still run the game.

Doesn’t seem to be much of a choice;
nothing but illusions and disguise.
If you take a stand, or find your voice,
all you know or say ends up in lies.

Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me;
just another day to make it through.
Wasn’t what they promised it would be:
finding something meaningful to do.

Doesn’t seem there’s anything that’s true;
everyone pretends in something more.
What’s the point in simply playing through?
Who is left to count the final score?

Doesn’t seem to be a worthy cause;
after all, what matters, when it’s done?
Instinct versus artificial law;
both are losers, if somebody’s won.

09 JUN 2017

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Win or Lose: Sicilian septet

Published on May 24, 2017

So often, when it comes to win or lose
(or what we each define as either one)
the pathways offered that we tend to choose
reflect the adage “ends as it’s begun”.
Could be the reason why we sing the blues
(and why not? Can you name a better one?).
Roll over, Ludwig; tell Peter the news.

24 MAY 2017

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In Between: séadna

Published on May 18, 2017

Perhaps there is no in between;
it’s either pitch black or light.
You inch forward or slip backwards,
fight each turn of day to night

imagining in fierce battle
you will lose your coward’s mask.
Believing in some great reward,
you ask your sword to hold fast.

There is no time for fool questions,
no need to see shades of gray.
Forget that distracting tension;
let play your guns, heroes say.

Perhaps there isn’t a middle
ground where opposing sides meet;
only space between the goalposts,
where cheats and ghosts find good seats.

18 MAY 2017

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Thought for the Day

Published on June 15, 2005

Grantland Rice (1880-1954) was a sportswriter for the New York Herald-Tribune. He was really one of the first, if not the first, famous sportscasters, immortalizing Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame squad as the “Four Horsemen” of the apocalypse, among other things, and coining many a pithy stanza along the way (e.g., “There’s no dearth of kindness in this world of ours; Only in our blindness we gather thorns for flowers.”). I imagine that his colorful commentary was often repeated by those growing up in the first part of the 20th century, particularly by boys like my father (born in 1928, the same year as Mickey Mouse). Such things leave great impressions. My father, for example, until his death often repeated something of Rice’s every now and again:

“When the one Great Scorer comes to score and writes against your name, He marks not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.”

In other words, it’s the means that matter. Never the ends. That’s a good thing to bear in mind.

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