I am the snowball lord! No one is safe, no prisoners
Allowed on the battlefield—I am stoned on a pond.
There are thirty kids, sorry, young people, provisioners
Of youth; still, I am a cruel god, whipping spheres
Like lightning, betraying the no headshot rules on
Accident. These children are my charge, I have not
Betrayed them, but contrary, given them a fairytale
Fight to remember, me the heel to their heroic plight.
Snow damp seeps through gloves, sweat through inner
Cotton, down jackets down despite the 19-degree chill.
Ensconced in the hearth of struggle, the heroes topple
The villain. Dylan drilled me in the temple—gadoosh—like Goliath,
I fell. I let them facewash, trample, bury me in snow.
The champions helped me up for lunch in joyous glow.
Hope is a concept that exists somewhere outside of Star Wars movies—
Only glowed in my guttural life during the beginnings, like lightsaber crystals bled crimson,
Dead endings. Why put so much stock in an evasive emotion, timid like faeries or God?
Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, not audacious hopers and hanger-onners
And Sith Lords. Language here is void, avoiding absolutes, so I translate visceral feeling.
Hope: the bubbly potential brimming in the gut, spreading like a star’s warmth on skin. Inside
Empty, a façade without nourishment, lacking the wood dust grits of determination and action.
Hope is wanting the Empire to fall while waiting on Tatooine, a trilogy of imperial rule repeating
Over again, hollow and selfish, containing no effort or motive to blow up Death Stars, sacrifice
Or not. But what about hope and, like Cholula, enhancing every savory dish? Like Chewbacca,
Cholula and grits a staple, hope and grit a garden, a two-pillar sermon serving staples
Like Chewbacca and Solo, two pillars to usher billions of rebels across spacetime and suffering.
If we believe Jyn Erso, a rebellion is built on hope, but a one pillar foundation meets devastation:
So wail your Wookie cry and act! Do. Or do not, Yoda said. There is no try. What a revelation!
I can’t quite seem to keep palms off my stick—
It’s not quite as unpleasant as it seems.
My hand has grown with callous and quite thick,
And yet that palm is yanking all my dreams.
Pornography Champions of Ages:
Brandish your swords, use Reddit if you dare!
Abstinence is some wisdom of sages,
No sutras speak of blowing loads with care!
Impersonal, mechanical act—
I’m thirty and admit I still use socks.
But what will be the price of sins I’ve wracked?
Will I cause my wife to change all the locks?
Away I scroll to my own damnation:
Elation. Cessation. Degradation
Wet walk down the subway line, blue crosstown Manhattan,
Cleaner than you remember last time. Metropolises often smell like
Poop on the platform stairwell, just a massive pile
Of shit, you have never seen more human feces in one place—
A true horse pile, a centaur-made monstrosity capped with orange-strawed Mega Gulp.
Hold your breath, the death-sweet rot breaks through anyways, manure and papaya,
Night soil in the nostrils, gag, tightening diaphragm to core to almost spewing breakfast.
Mouth sweating, salivating, sweat at the brow, spit onto the tracks below, inhale hot air;
Wrong line, not downtown, uptown, back up the stairs, shirt over nose, avert your eyes.
You cry, baseball in the esophagus begging—look, it really is just so much shit, like
You can’t help but wonder if the culprit is alive or if they stuck that Mega Gulp flag in
Their own mountain of self-made madness, a signature of pride for the world to witness
One last endeavor. Down the stairs across the tracks, a poor man paints the wall in piss,
Dodge at a discerning distance and catch the train anyways—oh New York, all hit or miss.
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