war took mine, i was sold  playing tenchu
on level 6... just before i was to
assassinate this ***, and he practised all
his bow skill in private, then it was made public
by a ninja... i only completed final
fantasy 7 with a walk-through...
i hate the fact that i stuck to
the schooling narrative...
  but hose were the PS1 days,
those days are gone, gone gone gone,
bye bye gone...
                 the **** was that?!
an oscar for best actor at the gladiator premier?!
why isn't more gaming mentioned in poetry?
where is raziel, and the the legacy of cain:
soul reaver, and the story about how he
squashed his brothers:
dumah, melchiah, rahab, and zephon?
oh look: the geek in me!
                 100 years from a youtube video...
i'm bound to do the bristol d'uh and say:
i've never been to south america...
nor ever...
                        me go sort out this avalanche
if that's o.k. with you, hmm?
this is the thrill you get when seeing peoiple
play a reincarnation of gameboy,
i.e. candy-crush saga... if you moved beyond
the PS1 universe you won't get it...
if you remember PS1 games, you'll probably
remember SEGA and sonic,
and age of empires 2, and sim city 3000...
**** me! but you won't probably remember the
weathergirl... who was becky mantin
when this was written...
           odd, that little gray box of saturdays
and sometimes sundays, but definitely
saturday mornings...
                    it gone... and i don't feel like owning
an update of it, because games have become
overtly narrative prone, they only allow thise gameplay
that's too narrated... i switch on the console
and i want mario bros. calculator type of dynamism...
instead i get this really complex story
when i should be reading a book...
   no, really, when did gaming become so
****** engrossing that i try to become distracted by
brick walls?
           when did i or when didn't i take to playing
chess? well... when i started playing dominos
with 6 cigarette stumps and a black hardcover
philosophy book... maybe around then.
books i great, believe me...
but this nook of counter-arcade games?
i woke up at 9am as if about to go to school
and played that japanese fetish for hours...
so much if our culture in nearing the post-20th
century culture was axis... it was almost all japanese...
you can't take that fact out and replace it
concerning: god intervened at Giza and yawned
at chichén itzá...
because you would... still, i thankfully retired
from the gaming experience (when did PS2 come out?
i wanted it for about 2 years and still didn't
get it)...
    1998? 1997?
                      thankfully i get to mention computer
games like novels... SEGA mega drive?
yep, owned that.
                   and yes, i can cite an ATARI,
and ****, **** **** me!
   that original NINTENDO?!
              and that shooting mallard simulation
against a screen of televisions that could
still issue you with van der graaf static
   of "levitating" hair?
(when televisions were still 3D and played
you remnants of the big bang
       in televised black and white khrrr sound,
all dicta fidgety, like looking through the eyes
of a bluebottle fly)... or
    the original prince of persia?
     those two dimensional ferns rotating round and
round when approached in the original tomb raider?
oh forget the cone-****-madonna...
shaid the ish cream van man to shaun shoonery...
cheap ****: said the dead with charlie
at the head of their horde of entertainment's flops.
i retired from the gaming world though,
left it when PS1 expired...
and morphed into PS2...
           i'm half sad and half saying: i can understand
candy crush, because i can understand
the origin: TETRIS.
like i can understand why i can't do crosswords,
my father just said: even i can't do them,
the clues are all a bit of a wanking to comprehend...
it's as if they only based them on the thesaurus...
   we're good on sudoku though, that can be solved
without problems...
        i miss those games though,
i finished final fantasy 7 with a walkthrough
though... tenchu was also fun to complete,
crash bandicoot? anyone remember him?
           now for not faking it...
                                     i'm glad that's over,
i'd hate the gaming experience as i hate interactive
t.v. thesedays... all this pause and rewind?
  thanks to it i sometimes press the STOP
button when listening to the radio and wonder
why it just keeps running... oh right: this isn't
a c.d. transmission... funny though, the gaming experience
translated into t.v. really has made advertising
ultra competative or utterly useless....
   you just end up pausing before a break, and then
scrolling past the advertisers' airtime...
next thing i'll be buying is when they make
an advert for shoepaste.

1
"New Latin, from Greek boulimia great hunger, from bou-, augmentative prefix (from bous head of cattle) + limoshunger

First Known Use: 14th century”

when i first got to california i would study the way ocean waves crashed upon the shores of beaches, it’s was bone crushing, pulp softening kind of tides. packs of tides keep rushing to the beach and throwing themselves down into it’s stand, as the beach absorbs each one.
it does not recoil.
i want to learn the earth’s secrets
i am attracted to water, tides of brevity, yet unrelenting to the sand
and the shells and sand they make regenerate, breaking down continuously
then hardening and heaving their particles back to the ocean
trusting it will be brought to some shore
the waves of the pacific quiet the waves inside my skull.

a constant pounding, a wave of bulls crashing through
uncharted territories even now.

i am coauthor of too many mistold memoirs
someone else wrote about me from afar.

2
it’s funny, no, i shouldn’t say that
it’s strange, how quickly one becomes commodity
how the pall of your skin has a scent
but your eyes are lassos
how, without your consent, your body can be bent
cut, *******, and transformed into an unanswerable question
drawing whole packs to your lone presence
dryly plucking the last drops of milk from a straw
you look up as they circle, giggling
and hunker into their places, surrounding

they’re the classic eclecticism of boys looking for fast entertainment
sure, let me be your dancing bull, wave the red cloth and dare me
because i am not the bull and i won’t let you have this one.
mr big ****, his homie in your face laughing at you
shy guy, and sarcastic dude who’s ******* bored
they say you don’t look like you grew up here
you think, “what, in this in-n-out?”
you say, “no, i’m from the east coast.”
whenever these things happen,
your words become bitten off at the ends

you hold onto your empty cup a bit too long as serious mr big **** talks at you
your head swimming with frustration and mistrust
homie who laughs jabs his finger into your face
pointing to the special sauce leaking from your burger
"aren’t you gonna eat that?"
you smile at him and you don’t know why but you just smile
you take a bite and chew with your mouth open
you haven’t got an appetite

you begin to cajole and retort casually with them,
seeing how long the game will last before it gets dumb
as if your harassers are friends
until the words “*******” enter your periphery
and in a fit of disgust you stuff the last bite down
and exit the pathetic scene
as you walk out to ringing laughter you find yourself
un-panicked but fatigued by the run in
thinking, when will i learn how to handle this ****?
and why should i have to learn to regularly handle harassment?
i never asked for this attention
never asked.

my body is not a question.


3
a slow burn of metaphors accompanies every bout of insanity
this week i’m convinced that i’m drowning from the inside out
when he comes over it’s hard to look at him, with his sweet eyes and adoration
after rushing around picking up the little pieces of myself off the carpet
hissing in disgust “stupid *****, stupid ******* ****”
and putting it all back together before he got here
because i feel less than nothing
far from beautiful

4
i would often imagine what people would do
after i died, if it would be
a mess of bad jokes about entitled white girls
with selfish insecurities
or a mess of bad sentiments about how i was a modest hard working girl who
who
who am i most days, except for someone
who ******* tried her hardest
i don’t like the idea of dying young, giving other people
control of how i’m remembered
i want to establish that image for myself
what a dream, what a dream.

who should get my trinkets, my instruments,
who got the glass collection, the tea cupboard
the patterned hats, the quartz stones and golden tooth
i thought about how the funeral would go
how my mother would cope
if my father could stand it
i have been making sand castles
and cooking messy cakes with frosting dripping jimmies
i have been reading books and
writing essays and working every run of the mill job
to keep my mother from crying
and my father from falling asleep in the stillness at night
regretting his regrets because i fall asleep in the stillness at night
regretting myself and thinking of him
regretting his regrets as his life stands behind him
and he drifts into a dream land where we do not exist but clouds

and i wonder, now, if i could still let this happen
if i could stand it, how much time i have to turn it around
i have been told you must invest
twice the time it took to dig the hole
in order to get out
if i start now, i can see the light by the time i’m roughly
37

i give my untouched binge food to homeless people
because watching them receive it
feels a lot more satisfying than the pain of eating it
fighting the weight of nausea
i hold back and return my wallet to my purse
as i whip around the burger king drive thru
and opt for dollar store cheese crackers in their little 16 cent per meal packages instead
that is to say, the package is the meal
i cannot fill my stomach these days,
with frozen organs and weeping ulcers
sweating and puking on the side of the road
i cannot sweat and puke on the side of the road these days
because i do not want to die, and must get better by 37
and these days, thesedays i have nightmares of men
with wild eyes and yellow teeth, bodying the window of my car
their hands groping for my face through the cracked window
pressing a gaping maw spittled against the glass
as i scream the deep scream of terror that comes from inside one’s stomach
when no one can hear or when a wild animal
is slaughtered by a larger feral creature, death drifting through the forest
home owners turning away with cold pressed spines
and wonder what died

i hear them talking about me from the hallway
more often than i speak of it myself
my bones crack, my muscles moan
i have no time left for sleep
the waves keep crashing down
i spend 12 hours in a day worrying about others
and try to take another 12 for myself but never quite
end up having that many
i wonder if you still think after hearing this poem
that this is a selfish insecurity
it is blurry childhood,
stab wounds from a series of sadness,
an insatiable wish to fill
the spaces of unmet need with small animals like me
wrapped up in unassuming parcels
forgotten under a christmas trees
eaten by maggots.

5
dear body,

they tell me we could have a heart attack
but i laugh at them
ask if i think I’m invincible and i laugh at them
i am far from it, because if i am anything i am a sponge
which doesn’t cause me to feel any less
just soak up the mess when there’s a spill
and continue to expand, adjust to the pressure, and then expand again
invincible is a generous word to use
for what i think i am
because i am weak, helpless, but angry

like a feral child biting doctors and snarling
or a person who lifts a car off an infant when the body gives you no choice
but to respond to the adrenaline of fear
pass the boundaries of what you believed to be true to save a life

i am simply adaptable, good at surviving
i have trained my body to be strong even when I am weak
my mind to stay sharp when my teeth have eroded
because the doctor doesn’t love you, and your mother
she’s sort of lying. like the government or dr jekyll.
you know not to trust people with empty eyes or bitter hearts
you will fight if it gets you out of this cell and closer to sunlight.
endurance is the only pride i cling to.

6
he picks up the book my mother was reading
"what’s this?" he skims the page looks at the block lettered heading "SUFFERING"
"suffering…" he looks up for a second,
then at me, and i wonder
if he knows, so i smile at him

when I was younger I didn’t get it
but now I fully understand how people
can keep secrets from their husbands and wives for years
some **** is too deep to allow
those you love
to wade in it

7
she swallowed me whole and after
clawing my way out of her stomach
I am still picking my fingernails
out of her teeth

8
i am paying for my grubby child hands
the baby bird bones in the backyard
of my childhood home
are singing warning bells to me from across a continent
they pierce my dreams when i finally sleep
the corn acres cresting golden hills in the dawn are gone
another night alone in a city far way from home
and my wings are still just feather and bone
muscle dead below, still holding the hilltops on her shoulders

you fall to the waves crashing down or
you pump the sore tendons of your weak wings
and you fly
there’s no other choice
your body is not a question
it is an answer
-