I.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, casting Squadron Hawks,
selling their souls in the streets at dawn looking for a playset of Jaces,
tall, skinny men and shorter ones too caught in the ecstasy, spun around in a brainstorm of light and swords and piercing words,
who sat in their chairs flickflickflick, hollow-eyed, gazing across all the Plains and Islands as far as the eye could see,
who thought and thought and bared their minds like their souls to the hive mind struggling and finding nothing,
who tweeted and read and hallucinated that maybe Goblins and maybe green is the answer,
who were expelled after two short rounds for erecting obscene Overgrown Battlements at the fore of dark forests,
who cowered in cardboard rooms, burning their rent for the joy of sculpting minds, the mad pleasure of blue sealing their fate,
who sang and danced and cried and played all in the dark haze pushed by the wind of a bird’s flapping wings,
who said “durdle” like the 11th commandment cast from the mountain in stone edict to lead fellow nomads out of the desert,
wandering down Vargas Street and Rue Matignon looking for a quick fix but finding nothing but the cheapest hotels and nothing stopping time and nothing
illuminating the acrylic picture of the motionless,
Mystic soldiers forged in stone, eating their fill but starving on the empty words that like lightning strike down from the clouds promising answers
but leaving gnawing hunger, tapping and untapping like we were born of seeds inside hollow husks, like Clio scribbling,
who slept in dusky 60watt trunks on the way to Charlotte from Paris and like the deepest ocean cannot settle on a single splash,
who settled on inquisitions into the deepest terrifying desolate reaches of the mind,
who like violent beasts went for the throat of the source of the sound and wind but were carried on by,
a cadre of champions or was it runners up who walked away from white and blue and toward the deepest velvet black,
the darkest of memories and the deepest of secrets whispering relief from the trembling earth,
minds shattered in a sordid affair of gleaming pointed intellect and ability faster than clouds racing toward the sun,
who vanished into nowhere when the Jordan, beloved smooth babbling brook changed courses and made a canyon right through Boston,
abandoning the darkness for a simpler crazy time when all colors in the world bowed to two,
who looked to the past and found sparks of imagination,
who like Betsy Ross had torrid love affairs with a mesmerizing palette of three, threads mating and making tapestry babies wailing into the sky,
who like the sound of a mirrored silver bell falling onto a braided green rug were barely heard over the noise of the hawks,
who feared at first the tangy venom of hooded snakes pushing dust aside in the grass, like gliding ships kissing land after weeks at sea,
who trembled at the massive sight of beasts roaming the Earth in a mad dash for glory,
who caught a ride on easy street where every bulletin board with open mouth screams but there is no fear,
who sat like a rich sultan surrounded by plush walls squishes grapes fed by fanning maidens because it was all too easy,
who childlike giggled at the toothy maw of fire shooting mountains, flickflickflick,
who despite the grand edicts of old men was determined to pass and always to pass by fire and storm and footprint,
who threw vitriol at the faces of children who thought that anything was better than nothing but were wrong,
and showing up without the beating of wings and the darting daring of steel blade in Boston, Dallas, Charlotte, or LA is like a book burning at City
Lights,
and there is only one who surpasses Zuul in omnipresence majesty terror and deliciousness and that one has a beak two claws and sits on the shoulder of
a blue man,
not bald but cowled (not cowed), and when the tired, huddled masses have gone home to their televisions and pleather couches and microwave pizzas there
is only the whisper of a hint of sacrilege,
there is no machina, only Deus Ex Mystic.
II.
What man of infinite mysteries seduced them with a kiss of knowledge and the full soft lips of qualification?
Jace! Power! Control! Brainstorming and passing the turn! Hopelessness and tears! Grown men trembling! Repetition repetition repetition!
Jace! Jace! Nightmare of Jace! Jace the Cruel! Jace the destroyer of men!
Jace the ultimate test! Jace the ghostly prison and erratic portal to knowledge untouched for ages! Jace whose abilities are pure! Jace the pillar of
Standard!
Jace whose mind is madness! Jace whose body is cold hard cash! Jace whose thoughts are Sufficient! Jace whose eyes are pools of infinite sorrow!
Jace whose fingers are a chilling graven caress! Jace whose planets are aligned! Jace whose laughter is an electric cloud! Jace whose stare is
immovable!
Jace who enables the worst of leaks! Jace whose power pierces the Aether! Jace whose coming heralds a day of judgment!
Jace in whom I place my trust! Jace in whom we dangle fearless on strings! Crazy in Jace! Powerful and confident in Jace!
Jace who is everywhere! Jace who is a ravenous conquering horde! Jace who drilled into my mind! Jace who inhales our soul!
Jace! Jace! Planeswalking friends! mellifluous card advantage! salt of the earth! synthesis of bird and man! infinite swords!
They splashed blue just to play Jace! Islands, colonnades, coasts, lands! lifting Jace to an all-seeing throne!
Thrills! mistakes! subtlety! ideals! gone with a rush of knowledge!
Mulligans! zeniths! lapsed cancellations! every iota of dominant decisions!
They saw it all! the cloaked form! the rise to power! the slouch of defeat! they shuffled for the last time! burning their Koths! waiting! waiting!
III.
To all the grinders! I’m with you in Louisville
where you’re looking for an answer
I’m with you in Louisville
where you’ll put the birds to sleep
I’m with you in Louisville
where you dream of purest steel[1]
I’m with you in Louisville
where you’re hoarse from screaming
I’m with you in Louisville
where you bow to heavy metal[2]
I’m with you in Louisville
where you’ll have the same dark grins and laughter,
I’m with you in Louisville
where you’re bored and lure fun strangers[3]
I’m with you in Louisville
where you stare out hotel windows and a rumbling rollercoaster
I’m with you in Louisville
where you beat for five consistently[4]
I’m with you in Louisville
where you split the seas and walk right through
I’m with you in Louisville
where with the joy of infinite life you sit quietly and wait[5]
I’m with you in Louisville
where we may avoid so many things we fear but may still be stricken by the power of
Jace twinning the new fast liar, deceiver of men We have escaped one doom to fall into another but it’s a fresh doom and we will revel in it
until once again in Indianapolis we cry out Jace, mercy mercy on us
____________________________________
Acknowledgements: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” without which I would have no structure, form, or voice
for this parody.
Please note that the decklists deliberately do not include Jace and consequently exclude the new Splinter Twin lists, about much already has been
written.
Creatures (26)
- 4 Kor Duelist
- 4 Steppe Lynx
- 4 Stoneforge Mystic
- 4 Squadron Hawk
- 4 Mirran Crusader
- 4 Puresteel Paladin
- 2 Blade Splicer
Lands (23)
Spells (11)
Creatures (27)
- 4 Ornithopter
- 4 Steel Overseer
- 4 Memnite
- 4 Signal Pest
- 4 Hex Parasite
- 4 Porcelain Legionnaire
- 3 Immolating Souleater
Lands (18)
- 14 Plains
- 4 Inkmoth Nexus
Spells (15)
Creatures (20)
- 2 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Turntimber Ranger
- 1 Jaddi Lifestrider
- 4 Vengevine
- 4 Fauna Shaman
Lands (24)
Spells (16)
Creatures (22)
- 3 Silver Myr
- 4 Lodestone Golem
- 1 Wurmcoil Engine
- 4 Grand Architect
- 1 Thopter Assembly
- 4 Treasure Mage
- 1 Moltensteel Dragon
- 4 Myr Superion
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (9)
Creatures (31)
- 4 Stoneforge Mystic
- 4 Soul's Attendant
- 4 Serra Ascendant
- 4 Ajani's Pridemate
- 3 Sun Titan
- 4 Leonin Relic-Warder
- 4 Suture Priest
- 4 Phyrexian Metamorph
Lands (25)
Spells (4)