Rules That Emerge from the Game Itself

Game produces its own rules.
The game is to defeat it.
You can play it by its rules,

And lose, or make your own rules
To find out how bad you are
At making rules for the game.

A popular strategy
Is to tack like a sailboat
Or a squirrel dodging traffic,

Cutting between the game’s rules
Going one way and the rules
That rush opposite to those.

Everything you accomplish
Like that, though it wins nothing,
Is just thrilling. You made it!

You can try to break the rules,
Of course, but they will break you.
You know why game’s rules break you?

This whole business of a game,
With rules, you invented this.
It’s that there’s no rules breaks you.