Level Up
(Kill Screen: The final screen in Donkey Kong, where the player's
abilities exceed the memory board. Only a few dedicated players
have ever reached it)
Donkey Kong's kill screen--
the Holy Grail where Mario
spins a somersault
before disappearing,
never having nabbed the girl
or undone the ape.
The search is endless
as Stuart Little's roadtrip
for his beloved.
Desire beckons, so
let yourself fall in love with
the wanting itself.
Barrels, elevators,
pixilated fireballs
fitfully controlled
by back and forth runs.
The number counter churrs to
a line of zeros--
code memory's end--
but you continue to exist,
joy stick under hand,
past the blank screen
and the whimpering music
plummeting downhill.
Classic arcade games
tinny muzak refills ears.
Close those tired eyes,
rub away ladders
and split-legged boundings.
You know what god feels
when everything falls
into place, the last barrel lept,
and your heart breaks in two
with a lightning crack.
You are the game and gamer.
No one can touch you.
Slap Happy
A string of perfect days stacks up
like cards in a magical solitaire hand.
Suites lining up one on top of the other,
the buried queen of spades comes off the jack
of diamonds effortlessly. You want to hold
your breath to keep them coming but it's
the release that allows them. Somehow,
for these brief days you can do no wrong.
Even the broken boiler flooding down
into your classroom on the first day
makes a beautiful kind of music
as it fills connect-the-dot buckets.
You can't help but admire the off-tune plinks
before you return the room to darkness.
And you sense behind it that no matter
what happened you'd accommodate it,
live in this perfect state of grace.
So when you put extra tollbooth money
into the hand of the attendant
it turns out the car behind you
houses your cousin who honks you over;
and the student who you wondered
why you were meeting week after week
to critique his testosterone-fueled screenplay
turns out to be Jordanian, knows Arabic,
and translates your Iraq poem for Mizna,
the Arab-American journal. Birds in a seed tray
look up. Sprinkler kicks on as you walk by,
dousing your cuffs deliciously. And when
you disassemble the hand-me-down desk
you see the legs are identical in height
to the desk top you were also going to trash.
For this brief moment, between each breath,
you can do no wrong. You know it will end,
but remember that for the Dalai Lama
it doesn't. The graced state the saints occupy
is not so far away. They’re so willing to live
there that if their impulse is to slap
the disciple they slap him.
So this world that fits hand in glove
is a miracle slapping you repeatedly.
David Sullivan’s first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and two of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced manuscript about the war in Iraq, was published by Tebot Bach. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan. He was awarded a Fulbright, and is teaching in China 2013-2014 (yesdasullivan.tumblr.com). His poems and books can be found at http://davidallensullivan.weebly.com/index.html
Next:
(Kill Screen: The final screen in Donkey Kong, where the player's
abilities exceed the memory board. Only a few dedicated players
have ever reached it)
Donkey Kong's kill screen--
the Holy Grail where Mario
spins a somersault
before disappearing,
never having nabbed the girl
or undone the ape.
The search is endless
as Stuart Little's roadtrip
for his beloved.
Desire beckons, so
let yourself fall in love with
the wanting itself.
Barrels, elevators,
pixilated fireballs
fitfully controlled
by back and forth runs.
The number counter churrs to
a line of zeros--
code memory's end--
but you continue to exist,
joy stick under hand,
past the blank screen
and the whimpering music
plummeting downhill.
Classic arcade games
tinny muzak refills ears.
Close those tired eyes,
rub away ladders
and split-legged boundings.
You know what god feels
when everything falls
into place, the last barrel lept,
and your heart breaks in two
with a lightning crack.
You are the game and gamer.
No one can touch you.
Slap Happy
A string of perfect days stacks up
like cards in a magical solitaire hand.
Suites lining up one on top of the other,
the buried queen of spades comes off the jack
of diamonds effortlessly. You want to hold
your breath to keep them coming but it's
the release that allows them. Somehow,
for these brief days you can do no wrong.
Even the broken boiler flooding down
into your classroom on the first day
makes a beautiful kind of music
as it fills connect-the-dot buckets.
You can't help but admire the off-tune plinks
before you return the room to darkness.
And you sense behind it that no matter
what happened you'd accommodate it,
live in this perfect state of grace.
So when you put extra tollbooth money
into the hand of the attendant
it turns out the car behind you
houses your cousin who honks you over;
and the student who you wondered
why you were meeting week after week
to critique his testosterone-fueled screenplay
turns out to be Jordanian, knows Arabic,
and translates your Iraq poem for Mizna,
the Arab-American journal. Birds in a seed tray
look up. Sprinkler kicks on as you walk by,
dousing your cuffs deliciously. And when
you disassemble the hand-me-down desk
you see the legs are identical in height
to the desk top you were also going to trash.
For this brief moment, between each breath,
you can do no wrong. You know it will end,
but remember that for the Dalai Lama
it doesn't. The graced state the saints occupy
is not so far away. They’re so willing to live
there that if their impulse is to slap
the disciple they slap him.
So this world that fits hand in glove
is a miracle slapping you repeatedly.
David Sullivan’s first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and two of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced manuscript about the war in Iraq, was published by Tebot Bach. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan. He was awarded a Fulbright, and is teaching in China 2013-2014 (yesdasullivan.tumblr.com). His poems and books can be found at http://davidallensullivan.weebly.com/index.html
Next: