Friendships are easy to lose when you play competitive videogames, rage quits and pride on the line, and yeah that's when things get insane. Smash bros, tekken, street fighter, king of fighters and mortal kombat, the greatest fighting games to ever come out of game designers hats. Its magic man, its addictive like gambling, who is the best gamer and who is a noob that everyone be trampling. Gg bro, even though we don't mean it though, your not as good as us, compared to us you are nothing but a ***. Powning and owning all you suckers, PC or console gaming, either way you are bound to find some trolling little *******. Gamer life, and one aspect of the nerd life, but there is more to our expansive life. There are the: know it all’s who can reference anything and corrects everything everyone says, and if you can't keep up, you can have a nice day. Star trek and star wars, collecting action figures that are definitely not dolls, roll them dice boy to see if our clan survives going down the falls. Dungeons and dragons, role-playing in a fantastic fantasyland, joining clubs like board games, videogames, writing, reading or band. Make fun of us now, but in the future we could be your bosses, so think about the next time you say that were wasting time trying to beat a dark souls boss. Cosplaying and reading comic books, this is the nerd life man, relaxing in our snuggies and croc's. Don't judge us without getting to know us, who knows you might want to get on the nerd bus. On a mission like Frodo or harry, going faster than the speed force just call us Barry. Feeling lucky punk, riding over you like a monster truck. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, steam, Sega, and PC, may just be me but I love it all, I'm not picky I appreciate things as they are like Marvel and DC.  Go go gadget, hate getting stuck traffic, I'm not the killer, I'm as innocent as Rodger rabbit. Please Ed, edd, and eddy, don't need to cause a scene because that would be pretty petty. What's the sitch wade, better beat those bad guys that choose to miss behave even if it effects my school grade. Kids that watch Cartoon Network nowadays will never how awesome it used to be, shows like samurai jack, power puff girls, Johnny bravo or Dexter’s laboratory. Duck hunting, ****** tunes and chill binge on anime and the only slam-dunk we do is Denny's pancakes sorry Shaquille O’Neal. Pocket protecting fiends; not to good at puberty, man we spending it all watching reality kings. New beginnings, love seeing what’s new at e3 each year, except for waiting for that game to arrive, counting the days till it finally appears. This the Nerd life, I may have never got the attention of girls when I was young but who knows I may just find myself a nerd wife. I can't wait to show my kids all that I know, the circle of life man, now I have a new perspective on watching this kid of mine grow. Future hopes, future class blasting off into possibilities, nerd life man better build up my durability.

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.

Where I’m From
I am from wires,
from electricity and TV screens.
I am from the dust covering the console.
(Piled high, thick,
It made me sneeze)
I am from the Sega Genesis
the Nintendo
Who has long been forgotten
amongst the shiny new games.

I am from controllers and memory cards,
From Mario and Sonic.
I’m from the ******* gamers,
And the once-in-a-whiles,
From You win! And Game over!
I’m from Thou saveth the princess
With Donkey and Diddy
And 10 cheats I know by heart.

I’m from GameStop and Best Buy,
brand new plastic and overheating console.
From the controller thrown across the room
To the memories,
bonding brother and sister.

In my closet is a box,
filled with old games,
scratched up discs
that will never again work
I am from these games
created before I was born,
born from the tree of electronics.

Born heavy as adorned many: objectivity lifts ready existance carried more steady with the fist than a switchblade as to fist crave: yall just manisfest id shame when you spit back like all my family here to spit crack bone in been gripped back when at grown taught to **** Macks;
I'm the R to the Mack Marck M heavy to my fam born carried since Nas dropped the bomb that Eminem levied in so to spit back, like ghost spittin the **** shittin at all emcees here to spit back:
only time you'd get a note outta me relative is when i'm posing for death: like tupac menacing his pelvis still for the ****** levy in neglection in pics wack;
i spit bone quick when it comes to being notorious in a jacuzzi playing sega and super nintendo **** be in disrespect to ever understand that i don't spit thick back.

i flow sick that before i flow spit that between to post ****:
I pose **** to even to boast fits forgotten what the Ohmegaus finds the rest as undereducated life in being in the sun.
Ghost spittin future written past to see all the conjugatives relative like ****** games on the run:
games on the fun like extension big sides as big sizes like chasing dreams again straight to the the sun is what we've become.

unfinished...

this ain't motherfucken games, and you know id through wish-epic

The violet sky stood bashful against the dimming horizon. Stark trees sprang from the ground, flourishing in dots midst the blushing stars.

Street lights flicker on, reminding me of how mom didn't have to yell for me to come home, the lights whispered it to me, carried in the caressing breeze.

I'm reminded in the spring, of the day me and my friend ran into the pelting rain and jumped through puddles, soaking our bodies in high pitched laughter and impending colds.

I'm always reminded in the summer months, how everyone including myself, preferred water from the hose over water from the tap. Or how we'd run rampant through the field behind my house, screaming against the heat.

The broken sidewalk reminds me of the time when we all thought we were cool for trying to smoke cigarettes we stole from our parents.

I fell in love with patches of clovers more than that of a boy's selfish smile. I was more in love with the act of collecting lady bugs as pets rather than holding a hand pushed into mud.

I preferred shallow swimming pools over the small voice of a boy asking me if i had other friends like them. Or how the beam of the sun was better than the beam of a slender, pale face with blue eyes.

Blind and innocent children, we fell in love with things we could touch or splash in. We fell in love with the beautiful colors and characters in our favorite Saturday morning cartoons. When we weren't playing cops and robbers, we were lost in a world of SEGA and Super Nintendo 64. We were infatuated with a world that never altered, but our vision cleared of.

We were saturated in a time where our only big worry was making sure we got our recess time. And when the smog cleared we realized our biggest worry was making our parents proud.
And it seems that it should be the other way. We should be proud of the kid our parents raised.
But ultimately, the monsters under our beds became the demons in our heads.
And the kid your parents raised
slowly became the kid you wish your parents never had.

There won't be a day in my life where i wish i could fall in love with the sound of an ice cream truck, or the animals at the end of my bed again.

the skull and spine of seventy seven men, extracted.
retribution far past putrefaction.
a pile of bones in the center of town, at the corner of washington
& rochambeau.
gather around.

           do you believe in the boogeyman?

a glitch in the darkness.
an echo of rage, high chroma bacteriophage.
every faithless father,
every sister spared,
every ritual sung just right, a brief blackout,
reconfigured pixels of outer night.

                     [bobby’s sega genesis awakens on its own]

thirty three years to the day, he
died on that suncrest boulevard, returned today just to say “hey.”

graveyard family tree and the moon.
first as a manifestation of electromagnetic phenomena
            in a videogame’s cpu. 1993.
second as a fully-fledged entity materialized via videocassette,
            hungry for pizza and pure vengeance. 2001.
third from beneath bedrock, the quarry belly baste,
            a body buried thrice, undead toxic tumescence,    
            a walking corpse heaving black plasma. 2020.

the sequel.
the son.
the spectral chosen one, he
rips out a throat or two, quite fashionably so,
a man about town throttled and disemboweled,
as friends and neighbors stumble and sprint to escape with their own godforsaken skin.
let the bone collection begin.
emerged in afterschool hallways to **** old classmates turned teachers.
emerged in afterhours offices to devour old buddies turned bankers.
emerged in the quiet dark homes of neighborhood flesh and folk.
blood soaked socks.

why? you ask, must all these people die?
vengeance?    no.
that was a lie.
he killed those people for a laugh
& that’s that.

La donzelletta vien dalla campagna,
In sul calar del sole,
Col suo fascio dell'erba; e reca in mano
Un mazzolin di rose e di viole,
Onde, siccome suole,
Ornare ella si appresta
Dimani, al dì di festa, il petto e il crine.
Siede con le vicine
Su la scala a filar la vecchierella,
Incontro là dove si perde il giorno;
E novellando vien del suo buon tempo,
Quando ai dì della festa ella si ornava,
Ed ancor sana e snella
Solea danzar la sera intra di quei
Ch'ebbe compagni dell'età più bella.
Già tutta l'aria imbruna,
Torna azzurro il sereno, e tornan l'ombre
Giù dà colli e dà tetti,
Al biancheggiar della recente luna.
Or la squilla dà segno
Della festa che viene;
Ed a quel suon diresti
Che il cor si riconforta.
I fanciulli gridando
Su la piazzuola in frotta,
E qua e là saltando,
Fanno un lieto romore:
E intanto riede alla sua parca mensa,
Fischiando, il zappatore,
E seco pensa al dì del suo riposo.
Poi quando intorno è spenta ogni altra face,
E tutto l'altro tace,
Odi il martel picchiare, odi la sega
Del legnaiuol, che veglia
Nella chiusa bottega alla lucerna,
E s'affretta, e s'adopra
Di fornir l'opra anzi il chiarir dell'alba.
Questo di sette è il più gradito giorno,
Pien di speme e di gioia:
Diman tristezza e noia
Recheran l'ore, ed al travaglio usato
Ciascuno in suo pensier farà ritorno.
Garzoncello scherzoso,
Cotesta età fiorita
È come un giorno d'allegrezza pieno,
Giorno chiaro, sereno,
Che precorre alla festa di tua vita.
Godi, fanciullo mio; stato soave,
Stagion lieta è cotesta.
Altro dirti non vò; ma la tua festa
Ch'anco tardi a venir non ti sia grave.

Summer. bike ride. I’m a child. I live just outside of Churchill Downs in Kentucky. young in skinned knees, pumping a 10 speed in a humid southern town, dodging cracks in the side walk. it’s an old superstition and I still hold it. grass growing in tiny bunches, in cracks. sun peeling the skin. candy rotting the teeth. the city is so *****. the houses dilapidated like fallen, shambling drunks. paint crumbling. and my brother ate paint chips. someone called him *******. rusted cars, playing house. sedan clubhouse, an oven in July. garbage day, rummaging for toys. I once found Quik strawberry milk in the trash I consumed it, and later felt like ****. hot trash treats. cumulus cloud companions, balloons without strings, the heat over eighty degrees, friends none to speak. after school fight. kids claiming coitus in the elementary. country music blaring from a fake wood radio. I found the radio on the curb and was proud of my conquest. all the lyrics incoherent but somehow they resonated. riding bikes all day. no parents. busy, their marriages failing, lives changing. riding through the slums. the houses of broken homes watching me tiredly. boarded eyes. down steep hills. up plywood ramps. kids jeering from porches, throwing rocks, glass, anything. scribbled graffiti. the rain makes everything more loathsome, wet clinging grime.  the dirt sticks to everything. fingertip messages scrawled on cars. s.o.s. twenty foot Marlboro man towering above the block, faded, peeling, half his face gone. like a totem making sentry of the oiled trash, the houses and apartments nodding to demolition. meanwhile, the thoroughbreds are fenced off and protected like coveted family jewels. I stood at the fence and thought, that’s all Kentucky is to the world. just some **** horses. Now and Laters and candy lips stick, my front porch.  the house leans. a drunk on the curb mouth a gape and snoring. is that your dad? no he’s in the tavern across the street. he lives there and its always loud. angry sounding buses threaten to squash the spastic child cyclers as they clutch their Sega genesis desires. cleaning gritty fingernails, I learned that my math teacher was dead. her car she wrapped around an old elm or maple on Southern Parkway the night before. my dad signed me out of school and took me to see the spot where she died. on the asphalt a ripe red stain. did I make this up or was that real? death. learning about death. with cockroaches. the bug-man sprayed and killed your parakeet, Christina. it was stuck to the newspaper that lined the bottom of its cage. I recorded it chirping on a cassette tape. I remember running terrified from rusted sedans. dented and hosting drug addled predators in cut-off jeans, wet legs stuck to torn imitation leather seats. ***** glued them and fueled them. I fled with my flea bitten mongrel friend. fly eaten, **** making. my dog made a minefield of our backyard. in this backyard where every Derby I parked tourist cars, the ladies in fine heals, disgusted and wobbling around the turds, the mud. I stood squat, shabby and I pocketed their money. Kentuckians, that’s all we are; horses, chicken and the cluck, Thompson.

Deadly with method man.
My sentence a weapon man.
Destined with ninja presence.
Sega Genesus
Metal brand.
Like Sega and sonic.
Rocking pride. Like its upped
Its level and. Got colors
From wells.
That swell. With acceptance
For every man. And that ***** social intelligence.
Not just for privileged folks.
But the existence. Of different folks.
I crave hope in a sacred note
Sighed from my little mouth
As I let it close.
My mind is a rhyme. The antidote.
The back and forth.
Like the senators tennis coach.
I may relish the rest I wrote.
And develope a social scheme.
But mostly I'm developed.
Like chess matches. Between
Beethoven. And poetry
With explosion. On kettle black.
But the ***
Says its nose is clean.
Reproach. Is a roach.
That might survive. Post apocalypse.
So before we explode
Could I take my mask off
And craft some
Actual poetry