‘Main Character Disease’ and other poems

Geramee Hensley

June 3, 2015

Main Character Disease

“What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets?”
— Dracula, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

My flesh is an inorganic compound,
pixels and rearranged numbers.

An electric baptism: my hardwiring
gutted, pouring out fizzes and hisses.

Secrets champagne out of me
and into ambient binary. Rubber capillaries

spring out like frayed yarn, and, oh
God what a joy to be so exposed

and misunderstood: the tenderest
corners of my kidneys rendered

for your viewing pleasure. Another millenia
of slaying vamps and looting castles.

During pause screens, I shadowbox demons.
During off time, my pantomime murders

do not end. When I die, and I will die,
I am revived from nothing—again—

 

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Female Character Disease

“Endure and survive.”
— Ellie, The Last of Us

A dream in which I am
a talking lamp

with breasts. Pixelated
and sharp,

when I hug those whom
I’m made to reward,

I leave a deep wound.
And between you and me,

nothing should be as crammable
as putty,

but when asked
what I mean to you

you didn’t blink once;
your nose didn’t wrinkle.

The snow touched everything
but you.

 

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Archetypal Villain Disease

“What is better—to be good, or to overcome your nature through great effort?”
— Paarthurnax, Skyrim

What gave me away—the overabundance
of lack,

rusted shackles for teeth,
a scowl like blasting jelly?

My problem is I just think better
with a pixelated cigarette in my mouth.

Knowing you is like sipping
methadone,

a high that ends like the hiccups.
So what if my spine is a big

gummy worm? The god in me knows
no winter, instead my mouth

is a shucked oyster shell in which
you supplant my tongue with a pearly

magnet, this head a cocktail of diseased
chemicals drawn into your polarizing waters.