Illusory Is Lusory

The software that defeats you
At all games you’ve invented
Was a game you invented.

What if, instead of asking
How to win or what’s the point,
Or even why game-making,

Ask what are these things, these games?
Wittgenstein folded smoothly
Into a small parable

That keeps getting repeated,
About how definition
Can never encapsulate

The gaminess of games, only
Nod at similarities,
At clusters of relations.

Wittgenstein! Who could argue?
Move on, game over, the end
Of discussion. Discussion

Itself is a game, and like
All the other games (yes, all)
It is both pinched and open,

A sausage-making machine,
Jacketing the messy world,
Twisting it off in units,

But no precision endpoint
To how sausages get made.
No one wants to look inside,

To pull all the guts back out.
Just eat your games and shut up,
Or pretend you’re beyond them,

Trivial, disgusting things,
Unhealthy, immoral, wastes
Of time and lives, digesting

The remains of digestion.
Okay, that’s enough conceit.
Ur narrative, ur language

Even, maybe, the species
Or one of its ancestors
Invented parsing the world

Of what goes on between brains,
The way life first invented
Sacking molecules in fats

Sealing metabolism
Inside of permeable,
Flexible, pinch-offable

Walls with gates. Call game’s walls
The flexible boundaries
Between small worlds of game rules,

Arbitrary by nature
And only enforced inside,
And the recognized outside,

Which cannot be gainsaid
Any more than entropy,
Since entropy’s what’s out there.

If you have rules, boundaries
Between the game and the world,
Some heat, you’re ready to play.