by Sean Murphy.
How else can our resilience be explained
except by the video games we played—
the early ‘80s offering us invaders from space
on screen and nuclear apocalypse everywhere else
(except when we were asleep, and that’s the lesson
we learned, cable TV our textbook: death never rests),
so even when you’re staying alive and winning,
it’s imperative to amass more, all the time:
lives & extra energy & points & whatever else
you can put in the bank—immunity as antidote,
because every day in the future’s a rainy one
if we get caught on the wrong side of ever-after:
it’s Game Over once we’re out of quarters or luck.