Alexander B Joy
Balloon Fight, 1998
From the start, it had the makings
Of tradition or OCD, so often
The same thing. We'd crack the plastic case,
Blue and brittle like new ice,
And pry out its cartridge, the cold gray of slate
Encrusting a weight like a half-read missal.
If shaken, something with the morbid promise
Of a lost tooth rattled inside.
We'd always push our luck and try
To skirt that first resuscitating kiss
And load it without blowing a breath of life
Between its hard lips, which for years
I feared would warp my muscles' memories
And erase all trace of my first former girl.
But, for skipping that step, the screen
Would flash the tints of a prism in rain, or show
Mosaics garbled like someone else's dreams.
When you caught your breath, and your lungs
Leveled with your unquiet heart,
The title screen brought a monument's silence.
Neither bells nor whistles, only a marquee
The size of sunlight, textured like
Latex seconds prior to a tear. One red
Balloon, filled with possibilities unseized,
Hovered patient as a ghost beside your choice
Of gameplay mode. Its listless string
Swayed side to side, and struck me as the vague wag
Stuck in a forgotten dog's tail.
Three choices of game. The one we'd never pick
Tasked you to cruise a tractless stretch of sky
Alight with bladed stars, pulsing
With lethal voltage. We could not tell whether
You died from the shock – the wattage or the what?! –
(The body electric does not sing. It screams.)
Or the plunge from such heights into waters
Cold and deep as our fantasies,
And as full of toothy, predatory maws.
(The poem of the sea: a sordid couplet
For broadening grins on carnivore fishes.)
Or maybe your end came somewhere in between,
The moment finality asserts itself
In your heart's skipped beat, laying bare
Mechanism and limitation.
We'd justify our disinclinations by
Citing impatience, and how that mode allowed
Only one to play at a time.
(Even then,
Nobody sought to fly alone
Amidst the terror of an iFreezeRay: Poetry With A Pop - FreezeRay, Issue #8nfinite sky,
Where you'd remain separate from the material
Of worlds unmade only as long
As you could flail about your arms.)
So we'd opt for the other mode,
Where you could bring along a friend
To help you fend off hordes of nameless men
Whose bloodstream mingled mosquito
And hummingbird. The game claimed they
Were your enemies, but it was difficult
To say. The rewards proved greater
If you tangled with your alleged ally:
Twice the points for popping his balloons as when
You grounded those bizarre avian things,
Plus the momentary rush of swallowed flames
That followed the betrayal, much like watching
A tottering insect with a shredded wing.
(Sometimes, on my own, I'd start two-player quests
And as my mindless partner vegetated
I would have to decide between
Padding my score at his expense,
Or leaving him to bait the birds.
Did it once cross my mind that his swapped palette
Was me, wearing a filtered skin?
Do you suppose ethics start in empathy?)
My philosophical streak wants to call it
A petri dish, a lab for experiments
Testing what would transpire in a world without
Consequence.
(Yet who says that world is not ours?)
It's a metaphor that opens too much space,
Suggests that the action had a hint of chance,
Variables to protect repetition
Against ossifying into ritual.
We weren't smart enough to think like engineers
Or nihilists. We'd pantomime
The anarchy of seated authority,
Not pausing to wonder whether
What we deemed freedom was choreography.
The most riveting drama we could conceive
Involved us piercing a bird-man's mylar wings
Then letting him descend like a shriveled leaf,
And rather than dropping him into the brine
We'd leave him to settle on safer terrain,
Daring him to inflate his ride and escape.
We would sink him the second he mustered lift,
Repeating this until dominion's luster
Faded like a favored coin, or up until
Our parents summoned us to dine, and we faced
Sisyphean platters of bottomless greens.
You'd tally a higher score if you prolonged
The conflict. A quick solution,
However elegant, earned less. Plus, for us,
Time had yet to make the leap from obstacle
To resource. It loomed over us
In fogs, clouding the easy path
Between ourselves and who we'd wanted to be
So densely even the grown-ups could spot it.
One glimpse, and they'd begin to reprimand:
"Go outside and mow some lawns! Time is money,"
Uttered years before they realized the reverse
Cannot apply, despite the wish
Contained in all purchases and possessions.
Not that we were any wiser.
We'd soldier on, clutching our wars and tortures,
Although the extra lives, customarily
What mushroomed out of high scores, never arrived.
A small mercy, maybe, or else we'd have read
A pixelated map of Hell,
The circle set aside for sins
Of apathy and willful indecision.
An eternal return's fearful symmetry
Stamped on each stage's ceilinged sky:
Enfolded in itself, a cylinder's curve,
Or else the form of an autophagous worm.
But we could leave. You'd come back no more than thrice,
And meanwhile, modes of egress were close at hand.
My preferred method: the lake in each level
Obscured a maneater fish, roughly your size;
If you drew near, he would seize you in his jaws
And drag you through that dark mind's depths
Where ancient whales fall to pieces in decay.
We'd laugh too loudly to believe
His maker's fingers framed him for scourging roles –
When he'd strike, a melody sounded, shrill notes
Like a funeral dirge played upon kazoos.
We nicknamed him Mr. McSwimsaplenty.
As recompense for slurping us
We ascribed to him a bulimic mythos,
Envisioning a regret that took the shape
Of a uvula, begging to be caressed.
Because no remorse is jagged, after all.
They carry vague contours, indeterminate
Borders, the better to bleed themselves into
Nostalgia: you can't excise them
Lest you risk incisions in good memories.
(And how many amoebic happinesses
Metastasized from lesser provocations?)
Such protean ghosts would surface from the lake
Where winged men went to drown, their last breaths ensphered
In water fragile as an aspiration.
They'd drift up and away, a shyer cousin
Of the will-o'-the-wisp, and you would receive
Some paltry token if you could burst them first.
They traced the same meandering route as souls
Sloughing off Samsara.
(We seldom worried
Over the transit we'd abort; so much for
Our introduction to metempsychosis.)
We assumed they went the same place as our scores –
(You see, the cartridge had no recollections;
Unlike a camera, whose lens
Retains a faint sear like dead men's retinas,
Our game kept records with all the permanence
That wet sand confers on names ringed in a heart.
Neither did numbers stick to us. Our trophy
Amounted to a statue hewn down to shins.)
Off to wherever lost aspirations go.
This theatre of cruelty played out
Before a backdrop of a night
Flecked with stars, as brutal perhaps
As the dust collected in an open palm;
A sight so beautiful, you would feel compelled
To sever your ear, if not for the release
That came of breaking with the earth, and soaring
Beyond stagnant gravity and fastened hearts.
From the start, it had the makings
Of tradition or OCD, so often
The same thing. We'd crack the plastic case,
Blue and brittle like new ice,
And pry out its cartridge, the cold gray of slate
Encrusting a weight like a half-read missal.
If shaken, something with the morbid promise
Of a lost tooth rattled inside.
We'd always push our luck and try
To skirt that first resuscitating kiss
And load it without blowing a breath of life
Between its hard lips, which for years
I feared would warp my muscles' memories
And erase all trace of my first former girl.
But, for skipping that step, the screen
Would flash the tints of a prism in rain, or show
Mosaics garbled like someone else's dreams.
When you caught your breath, and your lungs
Leveled with your unquiet heart,
The title screen brought a monument's silence.
Neither bells nor whistles, only a marquee
The size of sunlight, textured like
Latex seconds prior to a tear. One red
Balloon, filled with possibilities unseized,
Hovered patient as a ghost beside your choice
Of gameplay mode. Its listless string
Swayed side to side, and struck me as the vague wag
Stuck in a forgotten dog's tail.
Three choices of game. The one we'd never pick
Tasked you to cruise a tractless stretch of sky
Alight with bladed stars, pulsing
With lethal voltage. We could not tell whether
You died from the shock – the wattage or the what?! –
(The body electric does not sing. It screams.)
Or the plunge from such heights into waters
Cold and deep as our fantasies,
And as full of toothy, predatory maws.
(The poem of the sea: a sordid couplet
For broadening grins on carnivore fishes.)
Or maybe your end came somewhere in between,
The moment finality asserts itself
In your heart's skipped beat, laying bare
Mechanism and limitation.
We'd justify our disinclinations by
Citing impatience, and how that mode allowed
Only one to play at a time.
(Even then,
Nobody sought to fly alone
Amidst the terror of an iFreezeRay: Poetry With A Pop - FreezeRay, Issue #8nfinite sky,
Where you'd remain separate from the material
Of worlds unmade only as long
As you could flail about your arms.)
So we'd opt for the other mode,
Where you could bring along a friend
To help you fend off hordes of nameless men
Whose bloodstream mingled mosquito
And hummingbird. The game claimed they
Were your enemies, but it was difficult
To say. The rewards proved greater
If you tangled with your alleged ally:
Twice the points for popping his balloons as when
You grounded those bizarre avian things,
Plus the momentary rush of swallowed flames
That followed the betrayal, much like watching
A tottering insect with a shredded wing.
(Sometimes, on my own, I'd start two-player quests
And as my mindless partner vegetated
I would have to decide between
Padding my score at his expense,
Or leaving him to bait the birds.
Did it once cross my mind that his swapped palette
Was me, wearing a filtered skin?
Do you suppose ethics start in empathy?)
My philosophical streak wants to call it
A petri dish, a lab for experiments
Testing what would transpire in a world without
Consequence.
(Yet who says that world is not ours?)
It's a metaphor that opens too much space,
Suggests that the action had a hint of chance,
Variables to protect repetition
Against ossifying into ritual.
We weren't smart enough to think like engineers
Or nihilists. We'd pantomime
The anarchy of seated authority,
Not pausing to wonder whether
What we deemed freedom was choreography.
The most riveting drama we could conceive
Involved us piercing a bird-man's mylar wings
Then letting him descend like a shriveled leaf,
And rather than dropping him into the brine
We'd leave him to settle on safer terrain,
Daring him to inflate his ride and escape.
We would sink him the second he mustered lift,
Repeating this until dominion's luster
Faded like a favored coin, or up until
Our parents summoned us to dine, and we faced
Sisyphean platters of bottomless greens.
You'd tally a higher score if you prolonged
The conflict. A quick solution,
However elegant, earned less. Plus, for us,
Time had yet to make the leap from obstacle
To resource. It loomed over us
In fogs, clouding the easy path
Between ourselves and who we'd wanted to be
So densely even the grown-ups could spot it.
One glimpse, and they'd begin to reprimand:
"Go outside and mow some lawns! Time is money,"
Uttered years before they realized the reverse
Cannot apply, despite the wish
Contained in all purchases and possessions.
Not that we were any wiser.
We'd soldier on, clutching our wars and tortures,
Although the extra lives, customarily
What mushroomed out of high scores, never arrived.
A small mercy, maybe, or else we'd have read
A pixelated map of Hell,
The circle set aside for sins
Of apathy and willful indecision.
An eternal return's fearful symmetry
Stamped on each stage's ceilinged sky:
Enfolded in itself, a cylinder's curve,
Or else the form of an autophagous worm.
But we could leave. You'd come back no more than thrice,
And meanwhile, modes of egress were close at hand.
My preferred method: the lake in each level
Obscured a maneater fish, roughly your size;
If you drew near, he would seize you in his jaws
And drag you through that dark mind's depths
Where ancient whales fall to pieces in decay.
We'd laugh too loudly to believe
His maker's fingers framed him for scourging roles –
When he'd strike, a melody sounded, shrill notes
Like a funeral dirge played upon kazoos.
We nicknamed him Mr. McSwimsaplenty.
As recompense for slurping us
We ascribed to him a bulimic mythos,
Envisioning a regret that took the shape
Of a uvula, begging to be caressed.
Because no remorse is jagged, after all.
They carry vague contours, indeterminate
Borders, the better to bleed themselves into
Nostalgia: you can't excise them
Lest you risk incisions in good memories.
(And how many amoebic happinesses
Metastasized from lesser provocations?)
Such protean ghosts would surface from the lake
Where winged men went to drown, their last breaths ensphered
In water fragile as an aspiration.
They'd drift up and away, a shyer cousin
Of the will-o'-the-wisp, and you would receive
Some paltry token if you could burst them first.
They traced the same meandering route as souls
Sloughing off Samsara.
(We seldom worried
Over the transit we'd abort; so much for
Our introduction to metempsychosis.)
We assumed they went the same place as our scores –
(You see, the cartridge had no recollections;
Unlike a camera, whose lens
Retains a faint sear like dead men's retinas,
Our game kept records with all the permanence
That wet sand confers on names ringed in a heart.
Neither did numbers stick to us. Our trophy
Amounted to a statue hewn down to shins.)
Off to wherever lost aspirations go.
This theatre of cruelty played out
Before a backdrop of a night
Flecked with stars, as brutal perhaps
As the dust collected in an open palm;
A sight so beautiful, you would feel compelled
To sever your ear, if not for the release
That came of breaking with the earth, and soaring
Beyond stagnant gravity and fastened hearts.