‘Split-Screen’ and other poems
Ryan Bender-Murphy
Two Games
Super-tongue stamps out civilization,
so survivors move into the eyes of storms;
cyclones are not enough, however, to save the world
once the gigantic tongue demolishes everything.
In a bedroom the shades are gold, and I put my hand
on your chest, imagining your movements, and you lift from the sheets
like a mummy in a popup book, the mobile phone reflecting
in your glasses, dollar bills flying overhead.
Split-Screen
The goblin bled thick red numbers, and I couldn’t stop slashing. “Do you understand, Jake?” A critical blow. “Yep.” I took a few fruits and several locks of children’s hair from the goblin’s corpse. “So then what do you want to do about it?” I switched from my sword to the mace and ran towards another goblin. “I dunno.” I needed to collect several of their heads. “My idea is hard to explain without a diagram, but basically we could hold each other and kiss each other without being in the same room.” I bagged the final head and walked to the tavern at the end of the hills. The sun was setting like the sun outside my window. “I just need to know that you won’t think I’m weird for making this suggestion.” At the tavern, three tall, bearded men sat at a table, and a woman wearing a green dress and black gloves stood behind the counter. A yellow exclamation mark floated over her head. I right-clicked, and after quickly scrolling through her nonsense about a brother killed by goblins, I received eight gold coins and 350 experience points. “Uh huh.” My girlfriend sighed over the phone. “Anyway, we would need to buy a few things, plant a few seeds, wire a few circuits, and well, learn how to combine a human body with a living organism that we create out of electricity.” I looked up from the computer and spun around in my chair. “Say that again.” The ceiling fan swirled like a whirlpool over my head. “Say what?”
Virtual Field
I had never seen creatures
Like this: bird beaks
Of four feet, wings glowing
In golden mists. Not just tails
But ropes snapping.
Each peck sent
Pain’s shockwaves.
My hands gripped grass globes.
Into my device screamed
I, and the sky screened
Static, frightening the birds
But not their gnawing.
Beyond and Beyond and Beyond
Charged particles.
I take those out of the granted wishes, which are steel by now,
and I point at the sky, a borrowed thing, until a carrier pigeon
bites off my finger.
I no longer need.
I am falling through rainforests.
I am pushed through automatic doors.
In front of a monitor, I stand beyond the turquoise afternoon.
The video game reveals its dimensions to me
and now I can see past its fields and buildings
into a white space.
A grand open white glow.
Lumps form on my chest.
Pus rises from my cheeks.
An angel devotes two hours a week to removing the lumps.
A sun god devotes two seconds to reforming my face.
This Tuesday, when I want to see that overwhelming white again,
I insert myself into cartoonish figures
and watch as matches reveal the sweat of kings.
I cart the flesh of insects into another world
where factories of semen pour
over the lodges I hide myself in.
I destroy those who clean malicious software
and place my veins
into the most processed systems
that have ever pumped light.
In this virtual space, the images begin to break down.
A loud bang erupts
and a cluster of gas giants forms.