MMORPG. It begins simply. You download, log in, choose a game name for yourself, pick a race, learn the rules.  Grow your city, your army, build might. Be attacked, lose troops, learn. Consider giving up. Be invited into an alliance.  Meet others. Talk laugh learn about people from all over the world. Grow … as a person.  Have fun.  Perhaps even escape the pain of the real world for a little while.

This wasn’t the poem I was planning to write today, but what happened in my “game” life affected my “real” life so deeply, I had to try expressing it…

 

The_Hunter’s Hearts

with love, for Odinson

 

like millions of others, i escape (insert own idiosyncratic ailment here)

that the heaviness the universe has lain across my lonely heart

by assuming an imagined identity & logging into a fictional world

 

there with thousands of other digital dwarves, pixeled pixies &

hairy footed short people (whose name can’t be used for legal reasons)

to play a harmless hobby that helps maintain sanity on the sadder days

 

yet somewhere in this electronic utopia  someone sadder than i, sadder

than most, sadder, & sadly, madder too.  for seemingly this man’s sole

delight is tormenting a grieving 11 year old boy about the recent death

 

of his mother.  what heartlessness, what emptiness of soul makes

a grown man believe such behaviour is acceptable in any reality

virtual, or flesh & blood. but i won’t dwell on him. he’s not worth it.

 

rather i’ll acknowledge the spontaneous beauty which took place in GC

(Global Chat to the uninitiated) as frenemies from dozens of alliances

rose up with one voice to silence Dubz, drive him into submission, away

 

his annoying pest like behaviour finally crossed a line, when he created

an alt (a character not his usual) of unrepeatable cruelty.  at that moment

although we’re spread across continents, in every timezone, babel’s babble

 

we all were hunter’s hearts, as one choir, protecting him from the ramblings

of a deranged & damaged mind. till his sister burst in roaring, a beautiful wild

lioness protecting her cub: a true ball buster; a twister carrying him home from oz.

 

if it’s possible, odinson, odiwan kenobi, my young sensai, my regular rap across

my knuckles because i don’t  farm or fight enough (any) battles; because my TK

count is not OK, & i just like to hug my might, hug, hug it throughout the night

 

if it’s possible, forget that sad pathetic broken heart who seeks to hurt you

think only of the 100’s of hearts around you; around the world, who love, care for

& want to you to grow up to be the very best Hunter we know you will be

 

*****

 

 

Elven Archer by Pickyme

Image from: http://pickyme.deviantart.com/art/Elven-Archer-146263547