The Safari Zone (For Ashton James)
I started writing a poetry book in lockdown about late Millennials / Generation Z, and this is one of the poems I came up with.
Yes, I wrote a poem about Pokémon … fight me.
I have burned untold days
on Leaf Green, Emerald and Heart Gold
throwing balls at battle beasts for lols
just to give myself a shock to the system
that there’s more to life than 9 to 5
kids in 2016 spoke to me about Pokémon
like they discovered it. They stare perplexed
at my guffaw. I was there in its
heyday of 2004 in battles between
Magma and Aqua, and they still lecture me.
I couldn’t blame them. Once those ‘mons
latch on that’s you for life. They spoke of this
new magic called Pokémon Go. I remember
Pokemon 2000 and early Pikachu. iGens cite this
new incantation. And I know I do not look
old enough to remember the early naughties (surprise).
School saw a Pokemon card market:
a shadow ball economy of Gengars and Umbreons
followed by a permeant trading-ban
though trading out of your year-six locker
sounded cooler back then; today
children of ten are YouTube millionaires
and the underground of my schoolyears
pales in comparison. When I talk to today’s youth
on how I recall battling Misty and Brock –
while they were in their mother’s womb…
I feel really old. The grey streak
on the right side of my head bulks up
and it’s in my grey hairs that sit the things
Gen Z will never understand what Pokemon did
for late millennials. I named my brother
for Ash Ketchum. He’s twelve now, and will never
understand why I see
Northampton in Pallet Town.
If I could take him to 2000, I would –
In the enthusiasm of primetime Mewtoo,
lodged in my aorta. However,
I cannot even join our minds
like those Vulcans, to show him
those long years of primetime television
they don’t make kids tv like that anymore.
Adventure Time and Gumball will be
what he’ll be chatting about in a decade
the things that made his childhood
I emerge from the Safari Zone
the tall grass of a world before Tik Tok,
Twitter and Facebook. I do what
I do best, use my last repels
