Asking for Directions in New Vegas
 

I posted this on my 1up.com blog, but I figured I'd throw it up here as well.
I used to be a poet.

Back in my undergrad years, I enrolled in a few poetry workshop courses, and naturally, attempted to inject some game culture into my work. As a result, I ended up with a couple of poems set in the post apocalyptic cityscapes of the games Wasteland and Fallout.

The following work is the first of these.

Asking For Directions in New Vegas

The streets all look the same now.
Her slash of color caught my eye.
The hooker on the corner clutched an
antique clock - iron hands rusted,
chipped and faded wood.

She pointed to a burnt hotel,
skeletal iron and rubble heaps
reached toward red sky
and purple clouds,
colors of her skirt and shoes.

Outside, beneath broken
adding machines, Grandma gawked at
Cadillac shells, dreamt of before-times.
She grinned toothlessly as I passed,
called me someone else's name.

Men in urine-stained t-shirts lounged
in lawn furniture on rooftops,
spit down at me. They speculated
on now-imaginary stocks and on
the location of their next bottle.

A smoking limousine sped past,
an ambulance and the usual battalion
of lawyers in pursuit. All sprayed the
broken alleys with gunfire. The city
ducked, then resumed its plodding.