Bless you, sweet Ginsberg, you saw your generation destroyed by madness,
whereas mine, well we reaped what you sewed, crooked lines
of pop culture madness, here’s to the death of Pac Man,
junkie infused tablet eating, pill popping maniac,
spare the ghosts turning blue with cold, spare the next level up
for what did it prove in the end, that we were just part of Pop Culture,
that Generation X reaped the seeds of what was no longer normal
as we hid ourselves in the dark and chewed occasionally on food delivered
and our nails, stumps and brittle, pulse climbing higher,
never seeing daylight, raising our blood pressure to the point of extremes,
the diabetic epidemic only a product of the way we have lived our lives,
dished out the dirt and become ghosts ourselves hiding round corners,
popping out only to ridicule, to scoff, to insult, to look clever, important
when we are nothing but empty heads rotting in a potato field
somewhere in Wisconsin, or we are the once former angels,
free falling to Earth, no parachute, no style, just waiting to hit the Earth
at a hundred miles an hour and yet not even causing a scar,
a meteorite hole in which clouds of dust obscure the land and make the air
unclear, we are simply not even good enough to cause the end of the world
in such a way yet we have somehow, by sheer dumb luck,
began to see it die, the planet on critical support, blood infusion,
plasma based and needles sticking out of our arms as we try to remember,
capture the feeling of once proud youth and dishonest hands rubbing
on the edge of the hem of the skirt and the glint in the other person’s eye
as sex suited a normal preoccupation and a sought after thrill gone sour,
here’s to the death of Pac Man, rotting plastic memories in a Florida swamp,
resided over the cigar smoking Donkey Kong, living on welfare and earning
few bucks on the side as he and Mario give hand jobs to the ever lasting
appeal of a duck with ADHD and a rabbit who loves to cross-dress, you see
we screwed up but we expect you to fix it, then we wonder why
you don’t have the energy to fix our psychological problems
as well as tidy your room, pick up the reins from a President
who is clearly full of shit and a Prime Minister who values your life
less than the two pound saved to save a burning building from killing you,
to the bankers, so up their own arseholes, full of capitalist spawn,
they found the cheat codes as kids and let everybody know they could solve
the cube, for a price, the sticky labels removed, always change the fiscal
rules to their advantage as easily as Mario totting a machine gun on screen
and destroying every asteroid under the sun,
here is to the death of Pac Man, non-biodegradable, slowly eaten
by Florida flies and alligator hunger, plastic tears on his round moon face
and his smile caved in by substance abuse and rotting gums,
yellow drool caught in the stubble of five day old gin and tonic,
sweetened to take away the toxic taste of its my right, I know my rights,
hand gestured autonomy by a man holding out his hand in friendship
and humour whilst pulling back the trigger stuck up tight against your
temple, or the woman who claims to love old silent movies but then
who talks at length through them all,
here is to the death of Pac Man, pill chewing, cocaine addicted yellow hide
coward, only alive when chasing ghosts down Broadway and 42nd Street,
the representative of a deluded cool, now starving to death, living on dreams
under a President who is as crazy as the times we cannot disinherit;
thanks Ginsberg, you were beautiful and insane.
Ian D. Hall 2017