Ode to PAC-MAN PARTY™

Rainbow sprinkles made of light

Overlapping, yet shadowless

A world sharp yet stretchy

Impervious to time, for you are time's

Prisoner, never aging, and thus

Forever aged

LEGENDARY VIDEO GAME FRANCHISE CHARACTER'S (30th) BIRTHDAY BONANZA

With all his weird-ass friends

(Why would a cookie want a gender?)

Christ-sanctioned gambling

(It is easier to import a vice; that way they are harder to read)

There is no greater friendship than bloodthirsty commerce

(Or a soul, for that matter?)

Monopoly clone

Surpasses the original by several atmospheres

Of crusty whipped-cream clouds

Light as vanilla and oxygen

I learned to taste the sky from you

IS THERE A GOD IN THIS WORLD?

If there were, I would pray to him

Offer up a million pastel balloons

To the five horsemen of his

Decadent apocalypse; two bruised octopi

welded to their vessels, traded speech for

Gunpowder, an eye for too many arms,

Two spiders with beads in their legs, no venom

Save the crank of sleep disturbed, say

It bothered me then and bothers me

Still, what did they ever do

To hurt you? You offered us their

Corpses like Christmas hams,

Piñatas to dissect, digital feasts

For the mind, and yet you gave them

Hearts to break, and to swallow like your candies

Does violence really taste that sweet to you?

WHY IS THERE A FUCKING YETI?

Who is the man in the faux-Persian palace?

(Or woman)

In the enfumed tent of famine?

(Or neither)

Who is that mad scientist, with no greater joy than velocity?

(Or God)

The faces we are not allowed to see?

Who cut a slice out of each of your eyes?

Whose pizza was defiled

For this morbid symbol to be tattooed

Upon you all?

Band of Play-Doh™ dead, no different

Than in life, rubber neon shadows for

The big guy, the poster boy, galactic mouth

Leaving no room for a stomach, does it all

Just

Vanish, like an outbreath in the wind

Is it all

Just

Vanity, those yellow pellets of

Sugar and dough no different

From the sand?

Purple-eyed jackal, queen of a hollow

Queendom, all her subjects are hiding

In the minigames, or are those worlds

Unto their own, played on repeat like

A tailored playlist on an eight-year-old's

Nintendo Walkman™, joy in a mirror

Like the glass on that little robot's

Hopeful cyclopean eye, I found kinship in you

Little brother, to whom gluttony and peers

Were more alien than the stars

Oh, and don't forget

The fucking yeti

WHY THE NUMBER 5?

I love it, actually, that you wear it

Like a badge of pride, so innocently

You would die if you knew the statistics

That your descendants boast, but to me

Those numbers are as hollow

As the hearts that carve them

I look upon your fruits, off-color

Jack-O'-Lanterns, legions of bright

Castles and flags, infinite des(s)erts that nonetheless

Warm the soul, and I know you are the greater one

INCLUDES THE ORIGINAL PAC-MAN ARCADE GAME

For you are a trove within a trove, a maze

Within a maze, dioramas of arcades

Old and new, holi-days and summer-days

Of my parents and me, you understand

What it means, to be a toy

To love play, to be a mind without chains

Every year we grow apart, and yet

With each passing birthday, our anniversaries

Never diverge, never fade

Like me, you will remain

Like me, you are greater than the sum of your parts

And French is your second language, like mine

Perhaps we are the same

I know we are the same

Because I am that teddy bear in his

Wooden rainbow pen, reaching

Wordlessly pleading,

"Please don't take my jelly beans."

And yet they take and they take

Some thoughtlessly, some with

Pity, but they always

Take

And one day like the predator

That was stuffed to make him,

He hardened in the rain and sold

His soul for vengeance, that blue sky

Reddened with the sunset

Of summers ending, dreams dying

Grown men crying, pride melting

From an angel's glare, who made you

Little bear? What God made you,

To stand alone, and let little fingers

Mash themselves against plastic

Buttons, against your hidden metal

Shell, while you flailed and flailed

Roared as you knew you could

Feel no pain in your berserker's rage, save that

Of the heart, as your gears failed and your

Fire turned to smoke, and in a blaze

Of colored blades, you fell to your knees

And the camera dared not look

Into your burning cherry eyes

That would not close?

RATED EVERYONE 10+ FOR MILD CARTOON VIOLENCE

If I had passed you up in that Target aisle

(Or was it Walmart?)

I think I would not have been myself

(And they say that video games are not art)