Written by Brianna Bullen.
One villager against an entire militia, change the scenario—
you’re playing life wrong. Be Joan of Arc
in historical spectacle
without the hallucinations. Change
the variables—make it winnable. Switch playing
red for blue. Suddenly, you’re an army against one
shedding so much red,
primary colour meltdown massacre.
Make it more of a challenge; an army clash. Woodstock
gives you extra wood, an ordered destruction of the forest
in a cheap typed in golden ticket.
You bond with your father.
Not knowing why he’s obsessed with control
in a fake war. He’s from another age
of accepted empires and nationalism. Yours is still
of extraction and accumulation. You click away, adding
trees to the terrain. Making a mining economy, stealing
relics from civilizations to speed up your gold growth, leading
to a countdown: two hundred years pass in equivalent to seconds
for a victory with less bloodshed
excluding the fucked-up horror
of dominating culture erasing culture. There’s no art in that;
objections to your strategy of waiting it out. You agree
you’re wasting time. Family always is
a destructive game. He gives you General orders
to take life by the jugular
but you have enough iron, gold and food
in-game.
Brianna Bullen’s work appears in the Colour, Order, Ethereal, Illusion, Contact, and Harmony editions of WORDLY.
