Author: James Renshaw

James Renshaw is a Sydney based Alt-Lit writer with a focus on video games and cybercultures. His debut poem ‘404 Not Found’ was published in Cordite Poetry Review and remixed in The Lifted Brow. With a lifelong goal to shed an intellectual light on interactive and digital experiences as a mantra for his writing and research, James is currently working on his first collection.

Gaymergate, James Renshaw

 

Get triggered by my bara-tiddy worship,

a can’t-unsee in your rule34 search –

the SFM McHanzo ship too stronk

for a bronze-tier tinder dudebro. Yeah

I’ll find someone like you raging on

a dell fit for CS:GO.

 

You’ve programmed me to be a lurkr,

an NPC following custom Dank Souls

rules, forever fucked in the faget spam –

teabags with the hacker’s headshot

(git gud) (deal with it), and

crackles of your e-peen playback

from a booth-babe Razer headset.

 

Are you in a monochrome cult classic

closed convention for the nerds who

grew up gains, and for those devolved

into fedora goblins – pimple neckbeards –

double-teaming G.I.R.Ls just so long

as you can common ground the cleavage

of Lara Croft’s supple poly prisms?

 

(I’ll bet you’d find them moist)

 

I can just feel your hands now: sticky –

bad handling of the pre-cream n’ tissues –

glossed over with the dirt of Doritos

and a fine Mountain Dew finish,

ready for some low-key ERP

STR8 hero fapfests in a hetero World

of Warcraft –

 

your fantasy; you know we’re living

a testosterone conundrum:

dat male blood-elf ass barrage,

all deez beefs and swole, and waves

after endless waves of orc cock

capping your daily quest logs.

 

But you’re salty. You can’t even

reality; butthurt that Bioware bitches

can warp the conversation wheels

and mod a man from your head

canon into the nope-depths

of the online dark side.

 

Welcome. Login

to the Grindr app crossover –

your sacred mancave backdoor’d

by the furfags and double rainbows;

you know what it means. ParTy up

and protect your fragile masculinity

from my emoji raids, encrypted:

1. SMiley2. Eggplant3. point4. OK

inb4 the Tumblrina cries, inb4

the Reddit downvote karma-fire,

before the 4chan trolls swarm,

doxx and DDoS with unsolicited

rootkit dick pics. GTFO

or get rekt.

 

 

James Renshaw

James Renshaw is a Sydney based Alt-Lit writer with a focus on video games and cybercultures. His debut poem ‘404 Not Found’ was published in Cordite Poetry Review and remixed in The Lifted Brow. With a lifelong goal to shed an intellectual light on interactive and digital experiences as a mantra for his writing and research, James is currently working on his first collection.

Westfall, James Renshaw

1.

At Saldean’s Farm was where I first met you rustling in the silverleaves,

in briarthorns, between the haystacks and broken-down harvest watchers.

Your low-poly green hair mismatched Westfall’s orange oversaturation,

and the ambient loops were far too calm, too quiet, for the way you ran

along the ash-brown stick fences, to the herbalism nodes and back again.

I yelled out to you (I meant to whisper)   /yell lol hey what r u doin

And everyone knew.   Swiftthistle      you wanted them for alchemy.

/yell whats alchemy    You /laugh      I traded you bread and water.

You gave me back the water.

 

2.

On the long stretch of Westfall’s coast was where we fished for treasure.

The wreckage spawns, spread thin beside the schools of oily blackmouths,

had linen, wool, and lockboxes. You could pick lockboxes. You could fend

off the packs of gurgling murlocs as I fumbled B for my 6-slot newbie bags,

looking for space. I had offered to help you when you stealthed and sneaked

up close to them for mageroyal and chests. (I could sheep) (I could nova)

(would dampen you) but you told me     /p dw i got it     /p roll on malachite

and     /p run away if i die                   I didn’t.     I died with you, chasing

your wisp form as a ghost, running to our lifeless bodies on the sand.

 

3.

When it rained over Westfall, the grass fields rendered in a sombre lime hue.

I was gathering your swiftthistles while you queued for Warsong Gulch, and

up on the Dagger Hills, I could see the flicks of low-res raindrops falling down

on the water by the lighthouse. You loved the thrill of PvP: running to and from

between the desert and the forest, capturing red flags, defending your own

Alliance blue. In there you chugged through speed-pots faster than we could

make them. The gold we could have made on the AH, we’d have epic mounts

ready for 60.    (You wouldn’t ever be 60)      /w its fun playing with you

you whispered me as you flew back to Sentinel Hill on a griffon taxi.

 

4.

At the Dead Acre was where I last saw you farming on the old tilled soil,

between the derelict mill and the wagon sunken in the ochre overgrowth.

You were killing off the harvest watchers, the strongest in the zone, but the

loot was glittering, and greyed-out names dotted my FOV. (I ran to see you)

(sprinted out from Duskwood)   I   /wave /wave /wave   and you /yell stop

(you meant to whisper). You partied up with me and said     /p im gonna quit

You traded me swiftthistles. You gave me back the bread. Then I watched you

in the Westfall night counting down from 20 to the exit.       You whispered me

/w you were a good friend             And I hearthed away when you logged off.

 

James Renshaw

James Renshaw is a Sydney based Alt-Lit writer with a focus on video games and cybercultures. His debut poem ‘404 Not Found’ was published in Cordite Poetry Review and remixed in The Lifted Brow. With a lifelong goal to shed an intellectual light on interactive and digital experiences as a mantra for his writing and research, James is currently working on his first collection.

Discord, James Renshaw

 

Cmd:   enigmatic apparition.

Animator images, processing rhythmic

words queued first as tacit-tactile,

synesthetic modes on mechanical [WASD]

– transmitting –       01100011 01101111

01101110 01110110 01100101 01110010

01110011 01100001 01110100 01101001

01101111 01101110   – transmitted –

as the left thumb beats [SPACEBAR].

Smash [ENTER] / Electric ultimatum.

Run:        the VOIP chill. Replica clutch, nail bites,

metronomic mouse-click hesitations –

FWD TO: peripherals

>press down [NUM](push-to-talk);

>push up (release)[NUM];

{Identify Connection?}             >input:

navigate my spine;                 >rasp:

the cerebellum; >pulse:           inhale;

>spiral: ears,                       exchange,

ASMR secrets;                     express

{YES} to me between the GPU fan-force

{NO}               white-noise-background

muffling the timbre in your mic.

Cmd:   troubleshoot me.          [CTRL] +

Interaction error 502               [SHIFT] +

bad gateway. You can              [ESC]

{X} to end human.exe(not responding)

if: high memory use;

if: unknown program;

if: first time connection;

if: unsecure;

James Renshaw

James Renshaw is a Sydney based Alt-Lit writer with a focus on video games and cybercultures. His debut poem ‘404 Not Found’ was published in Cordite Poetry Review and remixed in The Lifted Brow. With a lifelong goal to shed an intellectual light on interactive and digital experiences as a mantra for his writing and research, James is currently working on his first collection.

Ghosting, James Renshaw

 

Ghosting                                             Ghost

 

Hey                                                                                 Hey

    . . .                   . . .

 

I thought we could make it                  I couldn’t bear the thought

an idea formed from intimate               this idea made from vague

stop-motion pictures, brief initiatives would unravel me,

snaps of the blind flash                       would lace us in the blind

fiction, a coming of age                       flash fiction, reeling films

text-to-speech in motion, then out of speechless emotions,

coffee with conversations,                   coffee stains painting us

eyes; we’re parting our lips exchanging breaths; eyes

     opened, closed, opened, closed, opened, closed,

and the world can be real –                 and the world can’t be real –

 

our sudden escalations                       this I know will escalate

to nowhere. Or if that                           to nowhere. Or if that

     somewhere was a place I’d be sure that I’d be

for pixel parks – hidden                       safe from myself – hidden

in the flood of Wi-Fi signals                 in a tangle of Wi-Fi signals,

to the sent histories, lingering              bogged down in the cache,

with scents dug into my bed ruminating over fragments

sheets, and memoirs of a spoon          left indented on the outskirts

      indented on the right – of your physical life.

you were melding with me                   How could we materialise

in the middle of it all.                           in the middle of it all,

 

I was morphing our existence,             complacent in this existence –

now knowing you after knowing me knowing after you knowing now

you as hexadecimal. Maybe               of these consequential infinities?

it’s me who’s locked within                 I don’t want to barricade you

the handset infinite regress, within my firewalls and 4G

        here where we shift out fortresses of cybernetics

the bones of our conscience – connected to the white skins

I didn’t know we could                        and shuffling flesh. I can’t

when we siphon fluid words                bleed the veins of my words –

from our thumbs and risk it                 I’ll pour until our voices turn

   in some level of purgatory dust in purgatory drought,

decay in digital permanence.              rotting under our fleeting guise.

 

But deletion is permanence, or            But deletion is fleeting, and

a paradox when a ghost                      freedom when a human

kisses me, holds me,                         holds me, kisses me, takes

leaves a spoon indented                      my soul and indents it

on the right edge of the bed, in the outskirts of his life,

and any further traces                         and any further traces

         found in ideas formed of lost ideas made shared

from these cold stop-motion                from warm, vague initiatives

pictures and brief snaps from              unravelled in these films from

the blind flash fiction is                       the blind flash fiction, is

           framed for a profile, framed for a memory,

empty and without a name.                 locked away without a body.

 

Swipe Right                 Swipe Left


 

James Renshaw

James Renshaw is a Sydney based Alt-Lit writer with a focus on video games and cybercultures. His debut poem ‘404 Not Found’ was published in Cordite Poetry Review and remixed in The Lifted Brow. With a lifelong goal to shed an intellectual light on interactive and digital experiences as a mantra for his writing and research, James is currently working on his first collection.