Poem: The Konami Code
If you want to test someone to find out if (s)he is a “real” gamer, then ask about the Konami Code. It’s a cheat code used in several Konami games, but for whatever reason, it became so iconic that other video games also started to utilize it, and has become so prevalent in pop culture that ESPN, Facebook, and Google have featured it in Easter Eggs on their web sites. It’s kind of a big deal.
The Konami Code, by the way, is up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, usually followed by start or select and then start. I did that from memory. Be impressed… or don’t, since I just talked about how familiar every gamer should be with it.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about it. Please enjoy it.
I only had to use three continues before finishing this poem!! … which… doesn’t even make sense
Transcript:
Look at you!
Look at me
Look at you
Looking at nothing
BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST?
What’s it to you,
Super nerd?
I don’t think so—
Not this time—
So let me look around,
Look inside,
Pretend I believe in your fictional lies!
I’m gonna flip,
Iron Will;
Shoot to thrill, play to kill!
Stolen line just like the rest,
Unoriginality’s always been the best,
So do it sideways, up,
Up, down, down,
Left, right, left, right,
B, A, B, A,
Start the fight
Cause I’m gonna win,
Your chance was gone when I turned you on,
And now you’re gone, worse off than Pong,
Made obsolete by myself the 1337,
And when you scream I flip the switch
And live to fight another day.
Game Over, bitch.
Analysis:
- This is awful.
- Yes, I realize it’s not really about Konami. Or the Konami Code. Or anything.
- “1337” is pronounced “leet” (like “elite,” but without the “e”), in case you aren’t nerdy enough to immediately realize that.
- “And live to fight another day” is what the major bad guys (Bebop, Rocksteady, The Shredder, Krang) yelled all the time in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. So yes, that’s stolen, too.
- This… wow, this is awful.
I hope you were mildly entertained by this. Just remember: you can write better poetry than me. Sometimes I write decent stuff, but with this, I have officially set the bar so low, you can’t possibly do much worse. I’m gonna go punch the Konami Code into a controller for a while now.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Poetry about hell… and Roy from Smash Brothers
I’m not sure how or why this happened, but apparently I penned a few poems about hell. The first poem is my “main” hell poem, followed by a poem that is about both hell and Roy from Super Smash Brothers: Melee, equally. Let’s see how dark my high school mind could get:
A poem about hell, followed by a poem about hell and Roy from Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Transcript:
The descent.
Through the cloud;
Off a cliff;
Into the needles
—Of a blackberry bush.
The voice of death
Whirring in your head
The descent into hell—
You know that you’re dead.
The same from all places
The distance of the journey is
For central the location be
Of Auburn’s room 296.
Wow… talk about anticlimax. I’m guessing that my creative writing class met in room 296. Anyway, that poem is followed by a rough draft of the next poem. Moving along, here is that second poem:
Gripping, masculine, muscular hands
In hell, no-one can hear you—
Play Smash Brothers—
I guess Roy really IS flaming!
A few things:
- Roy is a character from Super Smash Brothers: Melee (originally from the Fire Emblem video game series), and I never liked him. His sword often bursts into the flame in the game, so I liked to call him things like “flaming idiot” and “flaming loser.” At the time, “to flame” someone meant “to insult” someone; I often had “flame wars” with my friend Captain, who of course LOVED Roy.
- The imagery of tightly gripped hands could apply to Roy’s very heavy in-game sword, but it ends up implying the grip used to hold a controller. This gives the Smash Brothers poem actual poetic validity, which both annoys and pleases me.
- I wonder why I specified “blackberry bush” in my first poem?
I like that my seemingly serious attempt at a poem about death/hell devolved into a stupid comment about my high school creative writing classroom, but my stupid anecdotal poem about a character I hated in Smash Brothers resulted in the creation of some actual legitimate poetry.
I’ve always been told that the best material comes from your passions. I was VERY passionate about Smash Brothers in high school (and college… and now), so I guess it makes sense that some semblance of creativity would have come out of me when writing about Roy.
…still feels totally ridiculous, though.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Futuristic poem of the future
My first poem of my creative writing class! This should be exciting. Let’s see what I came up with ten years ago today:
Futuristic poem is futuristic
Transcript:
Watching the grey cat crap,
I pick you up and jump over it,
Taking you across the creek to enjoy
The liquid in the plastic cup awaiting us
In the futuristic house
In the futuristic world
In our futuristic lives
…..of the future.
A few things:
- What. The hell. Is this.
- I legitimately never drank alcohol in high school, so I’m assuming the plastic cup contains Mountain Dew. In fact, I am positive this absolutely has to be the case.
- This “poem” is the kind of thing that makes me wonder where thoughts come from. And somehow, I don’t even care that I ended that sentence with a preposition.
I don’t have any record of what assignment spawned this obviously brilliant poem, so I won’t be writing a “modern-day version” of the assignment this time. Let’s hope things stay this ridiculous in the future!
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
HAIKU X 12 (14?)
I found a sheet of paper simply titled HAIKU X 12, which contained – you guessed it – 12 Haikus, mostly about my friends. There are also two at the bottom of the page that my friend Captain wrote, which are sadly the closest thing to a payoff you’re going to get in this post. If I had to guess, I would say that I wrote these in either 1999 or 2000 (8th or 9th grade).
I should also note that there was one Haiku that had been scribbled out into oblivion. I have no idea what it said.
Was I trying to write 12 or 14? #badhandwriting
Mute Mask is stupid
Karl please shut up right now
That picture is dumb
I hate [NAME REDACTED]
He is ugly and stupid
I want to kill him
My name is Cody
I run The Posse’s Web Page
Please call me The Game
Brad is athletic
He likes wrestling like me
We call him The Rock
Logan likes Star Wars
He is good with computers
He has a Dreamcast
Guy is the smallest
He is sugar-high and fast
He hangs out with Luke
Ron likes Gundam Wing
He always talks about it
He likes Space Ghost too
Chrissy is so loud
I could hit her with a rock
She laughs all the time
[[MYSTERIOUS DELETED HAIKU]]
Jon is really strong
He complains about Cody
Smash Brothers is ****
Nima hates [NAME REDACTED]
He wants to rip his arms off
I also want to
Jon likes RPG’s [sic]
He’s good at multiplayer
He’s cheap with Kirby
Jon’s Haikus at the bottom:
Cody’s poems are dumb
Yet are somewhat accurate
Hamburgers fly high
Cody sucks with nukes
He loses Starcraft a lot
Terrans are Jobbers
Cody Gough (dot com) 