Tetris Sequence

A sequence of poems of null aesthetic value unless you are nostalgic for Tetris.

The first half of life is Tetris; the second half is Jenga.

*

Lighting and thunder
but instead of thunder
it’s the Tetris theme
booming from the clouds
then slowly
fading.

*

Bathtub drain emanating reggae.

Pipe-cleaner dream-catchers.

Tarmac lit by tiki torches.

Ceiling fan with fan blades wrapped in barbed wire.

Skinny Tetris-piece necktie.

*

An angel playing
the Tetris theme
loud and fast on a harp.

*

Boomer handcuffed to a flagpole.

Gen-X Middle-Earth foreign policy scholar.

Millennial who doesn’t play guitar but who holds one while singing.

Pterodactyl with wings bound hoping to look human.

Unicorn skeleton discovered by a plumber in your crawlspace.

Grease stains on a wedding gown in the shape of falling Tetris pieces.

*

Submarine captain
cursed to relive upsetting
childhood Christmases
in the midst of nuclear crises.

Micropenised trillionaire.

Ant farm with tiny Santa hats on every ant.

Werewolf who only uses powers
to violently rip open snacks.

In the waiting room
at urgent care, the square
Tetris piece pierced
by a digital meat thermometer.

*

Scarfed, goggled, resurrected

Christ

shredding Everest

on a cross

like a snowboard.

*

A tithe you try to pay with art.

Fruit flies orbiting a Rubik’s cube.

Bags of artificial biodegradable fall leaves on sale at Target.

Framed photo of you
and someone you love
but no longer know
doing something both
of you no longer do.

Penalty-kicking an hourglass into a cave.

Renaissance painting
of the Virgin Mary
weeping Tetris pieces.

*

I’ve been playing Tetris for 42 years now, and I have condensed the lessons it has imparted into the following beautiful poem:

The world is full of falling objects, falling people, falling buildings, falling faces, falling lives.

You cannot save them from falling. The falling is inevitable. But you can guide the things you love toward meaningful landings.

Leaves fall. Rain falls. Then more rain falls. Then more leaves fall. Angels fall.

Wills and walls fall. Bridges and waterfalls fall. But they all land differently, unendingly, dependingly.

A dying friend once told me, referring to the pain of life, which is the pain of death: “You cannot avoid the pain, but you can avoid adding to the pain by not trying so hard to avoid it.”

He wasn’t dying when he said this, I was. Then I lived. Then later he was dying, but then even later, he also lived.

One day we’ll both be dead. One of us will die before the other. But we were always falling.

You can’t not fall, but you can with humility redirect your downward inertia into a meaningful lateral motion. You can also spin, and allow yourself to be spun.

But you first must accept that you can’t stop falling.

Nothing goes up, not ever, not really, not in the long run, except your age and heart-rate as you observe the world with increasing scrutiny, in increasing pieces, falling faster and faster.

Although blocks emerge from the sky in five different shapes, two of the shapes have mirror-images that some consider distinct: the crooked pieces resembling S and Z, and the right-angle pieces resembling L and J. So, some say there are seven shapes.

Five, seven, one, none — here is what we forget: if the fragments of this world failed to fall, they would never have the chance to interlock; to forestall evanescence; to become communities; to never vanish in a cataclysm of ghostly unity.

Incarcerated in a world of fallenness, fragmentation, the pressure of time, the horror of impermanence, the unbearable agony of witness — there is a glorious flicker of oneness with everything before becoming nothing once again.

In Tetris this event is given a score and is called a “line.”

Falling as people we eventually land in roles, relationships, families, towns, nations, designations inescapable and negotiated, inherited and abandoned, and, eventually — retroactively — destinies.

But if we can fit where we land, as awkward as it may seem at first, we may achieve a meaningful utility, an aesthetic vitality, and momentary prominence in being supported by and by supporting our fellow fallen and interlocked fragments.

Then we may achieve the best possible ending in life, to vanish in a flash of acceptance, interconnection, and harmony. To end up as one part of a horizontal “line,” feted members of a transectional continuity, though we began alone and falling.

Does a shape, when it leaves , when it joins the paradise of horizontal contiguity, return to the tumbler of inchoate forms to later fall back down again?

Or does it simply cease to be, making the forms that fall later entirely new individualities?

No one knows and it doesn’t matter.

All we need to know is that as we become nothing, new forms we resemble and may even be reborn as continue to ratchet down from the heavens from which we all have ratcheted, turning and being turned, rotating, being rotated, sliding, being slid, etc.

A brief interlude: I just wanted to thank you, whoever you are, for mindfully reading my beautiful Tetris poem. This isn’t part of the poem, it’s an interruption because the urge to express my gratitude was so overpowering. You have generously chosen to offer your attention to this poem in a world with so many other alternatives. Whether you despise or relish this type of interlude, I simply couldn’t let another word flow without first offering thanks. The last three lines of the poem are below, hopefully as beautiful as those that came before.

May you find the peace of these Tetris-based reflections to be true in your own time and place, regardless of whether you love or hate the game of Tetris, identify as a veteran or novice, or have never even played a single level.

The greatest and rarest thing in Tetris occurs when you manipulate a piece so it lands in such a way as to clear a line that also clears the whole field of play — leaving for a moment, before the next form descends, a digital landscape of pristine emptiness that represents maximum detachment from the built-up gunk of the past.

May the rest of your life exhibit the precise sequence of sideways slides and rotational nudges, that, slight though they may seem, vertically shepherd your consciousness from a state of spiritual free-fall to one of cosmic snugness grounded in your chosen and unchosen human context, marked by harmonious synchrony with all that is vast and inhuman, that felicitous emptiness that so assiduously teems — eternity.

*

Stonehenge
but the stones are all
giant ruined Tetris pieces.

*

Halloween
but the candy
is all Tetris pieces.

*

Ivy climbing a wall of ice.

Truck nuts on a time machine.

A giant diaper on a star.

A Grinch who steals everything but Christmas.

An hourglass full of falling Tetris pieces.

*

“A Tetris pro
keeps the blocks low,”
God thundered
when Noah wondered
why everyone had to die.

“I don’t cry
when the pile get high,”
He added with wind
blowing in Noah’s mind.
“I let go. I just flow.”

*

Playing Tetris while the world burns.
Playing Tetris while the world blooms.
Playing Tetris through a kaleidoscope
while the world remains unperturbed.

*

Spent all day
super-gluing Jenga blocks
into an unbreakable column.

Spent all evening
watching Tetris blocks fall
not even trying to guide them into place.