the gamer

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forgot the point
that games are preparation
for the real thing.

“Let The Games begin!”

but that all started
a decade ago, or more,
on a Saturday afternoon
at the park—

and Billy was better than Jennifer,
and Jeffry better than Billy,
and Amber gave her life to it
from that moment on.

but was Amber better at life?
what would she have told her younger self
after the shoulder replacements
and the decades of fear?

“You will meet the love of your life
in a Costco parking lot
cleaning up the mess of your chicken and chips
not because you had to

but because someone taught you
that who you are is easiest seen

when the only audiences are unseen.”

“I’d do it all again!” she said.
and she meant it.

The Stranger’s Case

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circa 1600 CE, credited to William Shakespeare

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an agèd man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

[…]Say now the king,
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.