wake up, rod

Lex, who I left ½ empty, on Daedalus ( after Bioforge ) half of something, left depleted, the master energy of that masterful thing – you bludgeoned him to death with his own arm, said a witty aphorism, breathed acid, walked among waste. master-switch death-ray meat, sing a wordless song on a pylon, left alone with a dying battery. you know damn well that if you shoot all those cyborgs I’ll die here. no do-overs. depletion, and I watch the world die. wake up with fingers bound by steel, with ten toes smelt to two. movement disorients. made of metal, but they left the skin on. gravity holds things to ground, minerals especially. a laser in the knuckles, a power cell in the arm – you decide not to find out where I came from. you forgot to put on my hazard suit before you ran...

The above is a quote from Prince of Persia, a remake of a classic 1980s video game. In the most recent iteration - as I understand it - the narrative elements are foregrounded throughout the game and the quote above occurs when one dies in the game. This got me thinking about consequences in video games. Recently I was talking to J.P. about a series of games wherein the goal is no less lofty than averting the apocalypse but the characters traipse toward their grim fate gingerly, languidly moving at the player's behest as if time was made of molasses. Video game worlds are fraught with this kind of unaccountability. In the Street Fighter series, people all over the world gather around to watch super-powered weirdos throw fireballs at each other with no thought that an errant fireball (they often miss) will plow through the crowd and toast the school girls hanging out (curiously) in a construction yard. Thankfully developers are starting to unpack this historical curiosity of video ...

or in print - namely, I've been gestating and mulling over the state of poetical affairs and such, and I see an entry point. There needs to be a journal out there that gives voice to newness, unqualified, that fucking BRINGS IT no matter what. That does, for poetry, what all these banging small press lit mags do for fiction (see: UNSAID [ http://www.unsaidmagazine.com/ ], NY Tyrant [ http://www.nytyrant.com/home.html ], etc.) - bring it, fresh as fucking flowers. Is it presumptuous? possibly. But necessary. I am actively considering fucking putting my absence of money where my abundance of mouth is, and trying to affect change. I think that there's poetry out there that can melt faces, depress uvulas, and penetrate brain flesh, and I think it's our job to find it, and give it the stage it deserves. Nothing small, nothing conventional, nothing simply designed. A big poetry journal for some big fucking words. This is not to say that I'm going to be gone from Rod - on the ...

http://www.voicesnet.com/loveromancepoems/poempoetry60187.htm if so, rawr you romance poet

So B.Scary posted a link to the City Lights No Contest which is to produce a less-than 200 word fiction piece using the following constraints: -No Adjectives -No Dialogue -No Space -No Time -No Omniscience -No Names Needless to say, it was difficult, but I did it, cuz' why not? The result is below: My dress, I possess the tense. How it looks, how it doesn't, feels - how it doesn't. Something is moving and it makes a noise. There is a patina of fear, but I do not react. I must not be seen in a dress, must remove it, replace it with a suit and a tie and a smile and hair sprouting from my chin. I know that what is boy is boy. What is girl, I cannot say, or will not say. I am taking off the dress. This is best, I think. I would not describe it. It is not my dress after all, even if I care for it. No. I am a boy, I possess the tense, and I do not make a noise. [126 words] (Though I did submit it to the contest, I don't actually intend to win - so if you find that I didn'...

an important message from the ministry of Rod: busy a bee? slippery as a nipple? try this nifty contest from city lights, submit your results to rod, and get yo self some bonus points! Thrilling City Lights Contest Link

Iz's First Visit Riffing in slim light sits Him. Him sits within sin singing within sin. Iz is pissing in his tin din-- it's his first piss with Him. Iz finds his piss ticking in his tin. Iz finds his piss nihilistic with Him sitting, spitting, skidding his Sin Sing. Him drinks gin, spitting hiss-diss: "Iz, finish this piss This shindig's ill! Living in Sin Sing, Iz will mind things Iz will mind" Iz is ticklish, Him is tickling Iz with his Sin Sing swinging. Iz swings with his Sin Sing hits- Living is frigid with Him in his pits.