Game 19

​CHI 100               BOS 105

Some things are perfect--

Time
Place
and Purpose.

Plymouth Rock, 1493.
Haight Ashbury, 1966.
Middle School, 1985.

I am of the
Joystick Generation.

A generation born
Again and again
(and again)
In cluttered adolescent bedrooms and basements.

The callous-thumbed pioneers of
Digital immortality.

But time marches on--

Evolve or die.
That’s the rule.

Well,
The Joystick grew up
And became the Controller.

And Karate Champ,
Before long
Had become Mortal Kombat.

And in that game,
When you have stunned  your opponent--
Beaten him within an inch of
Digital death--
The referee says,
As creepy as he can:

”Finish Him!”

And each player has special codes--
Special combinations
Of ups and downs
And lefts and rights
And As and Bs
And shit.

And those sequences
Trigger the most spectacular killings.

Skeletons pulled out of mouths
And people frozen
And shattered into a million pieces--

Super gruesome stuff.
Perfect for a middle school boy.

And these killing blows--
Fatalities, they’re called--
Became all that mattered.

The game within the game.

Kids staring at their controllers
Keying in memorized codes
Handed down from secret sources.

Ticky-tacking away
While the characters on the screen
Wobble and sway.

“FINISH HIM!”

But I could never quite learn the codes.

It was too much for me to keep straight--
Or to care about,
I guess.

So I’d just punch the guy to death.

And I’d win,
But somehow I’d still lose.

The game had changed,
And I wasn’t doing it right, anymore.

Time marches on.

If we fail to march with it
We are quickly
Left behind.