Day Ten: I Love Luka & Pic and a Word #308: Construction

I knew this day would come: Today I just must post the poem which I wrote on Thursday, because my love for Luka is stronger than any rules.

This post will be interesting to you if you love basketball at least a little. If not, you will learn something about me: I’m a fan. Love someone the way Luka loves to play and I love to watch. I mean, I can’t stop grinning.

Prompt 10: “Today’s (optional) prompt is pretty simple – a love poem!” 

First, a funny tweet I saw last month, after that grown man’s jam dunk by Luka. It’s not the same over here, of course, I’ve got my loving pack, but I still chuckled more than I should:

went to the store & bumped into someone i went to high school with

her: you have to come over and meet the baby! you married already? have any kids? what’s new??

me: uhhh…*shows her luka’s dunk*

— m (@miss77ela) March 3, 2022

And now my poem written in Luka’s voice.

Luka Magic

See, if I slow down enough,
I can slow down time.
Time has no meaning if it doesn’t pass.

If I do exactly what nobody thought 
I would
and could:

• go straight to the basket
as if there was nobody there;
• go straight at their best player,
because once I do him,
the others reconsider;
• pass the ball behind my back
to one I can’t see now
but could see just before;
• move away from the basket
to hit it better;
 
I win at the outset.
I win on principle.
I win before I even play.

If I play
as if I won already,
there is nothing you can do
but watch 
me do it.

The magic is free.
It’s on me.

Luka magic is best if you see it happen live, in the middle of the night in my case. But here somebody tried to capture it in a compilation. When Lyona, my friend in Pippi and Niki, read my poem and watched the video below – even though she loathes basketball – she wrote some things that will stuck with me forever. I repeat them here with utmost gratitude:

what i SEE : h e r e : is your brilliant incisive analysis of Luka’s skills & magic — which then, true to your nature, become transferable skills for your own wild magic. i SEE that.

when i watch the highlights?

what i actually see is Manja barreling thro a sheet of paper, pen & idea in hand, tossing words & conceits with equal aplomb, landing a jump shot, tossing an idea round the back to catch out the reader, before a triumphant dunk shot to slam the poem to its triumphant conclusion.

YOU are poetry in motion

there. that’s your poetry at its most Luka, glowing with size, confidence, magnetism, & absolutely no bullshit — dead on target. unstoppable.

That’s love right there. Many of you have been pouring love over my blog this month and every other month. Thank you all for everything.

And now see it for yourselves:

In photos and haiku, the Stožice Arena in my and Luka’s city, Ljubljana, Slovenia for Patrick’s Pic and a Word Challenge on the theme of construction. It was designed by architects SADAR+VUGA and built in 2010 for sport events and concerts. I’d had its design on my wall for years before it was built but now have yet to enter it.

I can see a shell.

It will grow here and bring joy.

Build it, they will come.

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In response to Patrick Jennings’ Pic and a Word Challenge #308: Construction

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: Miles of smiles (click for more smiles in photos)

Take one smile that you know well,
add another that made you you,
cry for this smile since it quickly melts,
hope all could smile as these two do.

Find a random joyful girl or two
and another one who gives good kale,
one whose smile guards a statue store,
one that was happy but lives no more.

A smile is to get this book in the mail,
or hers with advice to follow your heart,
he did it – though happy hippie he’s not,
and so did I, bestia and poems and all.

2019: In Rome

“Sto’ Franco forte,”
says amore’s father 
and flexes his muscles 
and we all laugh
because this is his name
and he is strong.
 
Amore looks at me 
with something like pride
and laughs:  
“Mortacci tua!
Spoken like a vera romana!” 

(Read all.) 

2020: 12 hay(na)kus

Here
sunset, there
fire on horizon. 

(Read other 11.)

2021: America

(Ah, junk drawer! I thought you said junkie.)

The policeman enters – 
the walls are thin
and my neighbour is a numerologist –  
and I explain to him that I’m leaving for
AMERICA!
That it’s my first time,
and the tourist visa I scored 
will be my favourite book mark
for decades.
That Los Angeles is waiting
to be discovered.
I’ll discover 
that Venice Beach has friendlier cops,
Mr. Cop,
but you are alright. 
Now leave, we need to go.

He leaves 
and everybody collects their packs
from the drawer.
 
(Read all.)

This day in my blogging history

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  2014: In London (crass joke alert):

  – How would you like your steak, Sir?
  – Bloody.
  – Very well, and how about some fucking potatoes?

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  2014: There’s raspberries, by Tomaž Šalamun (translated by me during a game we lost)

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  2014: Maybe, by Kajetan Kovič (translated by me):

  Maybe everything is completely different.
  Maybe everything is attached inside our souls
  and we walk our paths on the inside
  nowhere but on the inside
  through the meadows where
  no grass has ever grown. (Read on.)

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  2015: Afloat = awake. My first WPC (Weekly Photo Challenge) post

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  2016: The only thing one can really be sure of is the 7th wave.

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  2017: Memories of a good spa day

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