This is part of a series of things previously written, these ones being born from university assignments and trying out different techniques. I particularly liked the way these turned out (and besides, I love sharing the goodness of geekery and other things!). For the series’ preface, read this. 

Pushing Shoving Running

Pushing pushing pushing and never

pulling always driving until the force

transforms it into a

sharp boomerang which it always

does no matter how much you

force-coax it and you can push and shove and

pretend it’s not there all you like but

it’s a monstrous slingshot brimming with

work to finish tasks to check off things

to do and not do people to talk to

tears to lose

and hearts too

and the further you

stretch it from yourself, attempting distance

but achieving dilemma, the more it will sting as it

strikes back with force: a free reckoning from

the physics of life.

No more pushing and shoving and running

– only hurdles to run straight at with feet pounding at

the monsters that aren’t monsters, like bugs

squashed beneath your feet.

You sometimes sail over the hurdles

sometimes catch your toes on them and scrape your knees

but either way they’ve been jumped.

So do collect your $200 dollars, do pass GO,

and go, Go, GO!

April 2014

 

Nostalgic, Entertaining, Scintillating

Red, black and square: mostly grey actually, with a darker portion circling a stripe at the mouth

where a grey and ridged square cartridge is fed.

Colours spark along the silicon circuits within and display 8 bits at a time, but if

the screen stays black and staticky, then take it out, blow in the exposed

bottom circuitry and re-insert.

Have you tried turning it on and off again?

 

Red, black and square: this plastic-cased system lets plumbers jump over green pipes to save peachy princesses, all while sitting at home and not standing in an arcade.

You grip the rectangle controller: move with the cross-shaped D-pad, run fast and jump with B and A, and pause your flurried playing with START.

Pssst! Pressing UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START

gives you 30 lives in Konami’s Contra.

 

Red, black and square: during gameplay, the “POWER” button must stay pressed,

for if depressed a dead black screen will consume your game progress.

To play tomorrow where today left off, you must leave the machine warmly whirring

and the screen frozen with “PAUSED”

and a short and fat, red overall-clad Italian plumber mid-jump.

 

Red, black and square: it’s been almost 30 years since a white-bearded 8-bit man

declared “IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE: TAKE THIS” to a green-clad hero before bestowing upon him a wooden sword.

It’s dangerous to go alone; take this NES. It is Nostalgic, Entertaining and Scintillating.

April 2014

 

 

From Page to Age

a pen is grasped like a bottle

uncorked and words burst

and bubble and break

spilling across a page

wetting it softly and inky

the first word is a cry and

the first word is “mom”

they stand so delicate and

lime green still growing and

gathering words into sentences.

These start jumping into paragraphs,

the grammar red-headedly stubborn. The words

are still apple-y green but as they stretch along,

more colours are stumbled and wondered upon and

tucked into the page of sprouting moss green: a tad of

riotous red, a bucket of blushing rouge, a royal

account of purple, a grainy workbench of russet,

the setting sun’s gold, a sea of pondering indigo,

the hereditary Netherland’s orange, white to

back it all, and oily black only in specks soon

to be washed away.

The paragraphs have now come of age and grow into essays of beauteous scars, collections collected, and accompanied laughs towering forest green.

Pages are gently pulled apart at their perforations and pasted in a new notebook, laid near its origin. The black now splatters on its pages of growing colours and abiding olive green, vicious in its desire to cloud and choke, but cannot mix. The black keeps washing away, renewing and reminding there is a base of

white.

The words are still avocado green, though tempered with their number and the desk it lies on. It’s growing, word by sentence by paragraph into a novel. Soon, a gust of breath will whisk this modest collection of pages away, sharing their strings of “there, their, and they’re” and “I am here”.

It’s not yet written; the outline is there and it’s still growing forever green.

February 2014