Pixelated!

Today's Read Write Poem NaPoWrMo challenge #4 is Inside Out: "Setting your physical or metaphorical inner bits out of doors, to be walked around and looked at from odd angles, as if they were monuments or mailboxes."

I recently saw a TV decorator-type show about creating indoor/outdoor spaces, and, beautiful as some of the designs were, I was slightly horrified at the concept of having no boundaries between an inside and an outside space. I love being able to close the door on the world, draw the curtains shut, and cocoon myself inside, in a contained, dimly lit, and definitively indoor space. I find that very soothing. As enamored as I am with all of these landscapes, I think I would feel somewhat assaulted by the constant sight of the horizon, trees, beach, forest, desert, whatever it may be.

But oddly, when I sat down to write this poem, that's not what occurred to me. What occurred to me was that today, I spent $20.00 on a video game that I am going to have to return to the store because my computer doesn't have the specs to play it. I spent the money recklessly because I was completely enraptured by the storyline and the depiction of the (decidedly non-hyper-sexualized) female lead on the cover, who looked tough and graceful and capable and strong. My reptilian consumer brain kicked in instantly: I want me some of what she's got! And what better way to get it than dropping twenty bucks on a game? If I play it long enough, I'm sure to manifest some of her more stellar qualities! (My confidence in the power of role-playing is never-ending).

So I ended up writing about a conglomeration of all of the pixelated versions of myself I have ever created:


Pixelated


The technology's come through:
I've finally pixelated
my ideal self and you know
I have a feeling,
it's all going to be
just fine now. I'm equipped
for circumstances, combative
or sanguine. In either, I'll look
like sex in battle gear.
I dodge with prowess, in spite
of the weight of my provisions:
Plus six agility, plus ten
fire power, and bonus
damage against all things undead.
I fear no rabid wolves, no Worgen,
no raging elementals.
Nothing that lurks in the forest
of other
pixelated things, programmed
to attack on trigger.
I have
such courage, here.
If you could see
my skill in battle! (Or even just my hair,
bouncing back like a Suave commercial).

If you could see me
as I see myself,
how I know the wild
and unending grace within me.


--Kristen McHenry