"While I'm Driving Home" published in Ampersand Review today and how basketball obsession relates to alcoholics and addicts.

Here's a thought. Pistol Pete Maravich was an idol of mine on the basketball court. From the New York Times:

"As a kid, Pistol Pete would dribble a basketball outside a car window on his way to school, an obsessive practice ethic that also found him sitting in aisle seats at movie theaters so he could dribble while he watched, and a checkered pro career marked by injury, coaching turmoil, frequent drinking and, most of all, losing."

He was known as one of the greatest, an early innovator of "show time"; a magician on the court. (see video below)

Obsessiveness is also something quite familiar to alcoholics and addicts. Related to sports is the thrill of the chase, the excitement of playing the game and human need to dodge every bullet sometimes you win and sometimes, more tragically, you lose.

The poem I wrote, which was published today at The Ampersand Review, "While I"m Driving Home",  is about a couple, one battling to get sober and her boyfriend at the time who was also battling, but not as wisely. I wrote the poem before he passed, in 2009,  another victim to the disease.