The Reaper Wears a Red Tie, or the Donkey Kong Rap at 31

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Stupid Poetry. Today is another very special Weekend Post. Can you even believe it?

May is always a busy month, and one of the reasons for that, sometimes, is that it is the month in which I spawned onto this forsaken planet. May 23rd, 1995, I stepped out onto the Mercy Hospital floor in Dubuque, Iowa, tipped my top hat and tapped out a little dance, singing “hello my baby hello my honey hello my ragtime gal.” That’s right: I am Michigan J.Frog. If not literally, then spiritually.

Much like Michigan J. Frog, every year on my birthday, the first thing I do is listen to the Donkey Kong Rap from Donkey Kong 64, and then write a poem about it. I’ve been doing this since I turned 25 right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic while renovating a house, fresh out of grad school, losing my mind a little bit. I am now 31, and have continued to lose my mind a little bit, and so I still write these poems. I look forward to it every year. When I started doing it, I don’t think I really had much of an idea for it besides that I thought it was a good bit (this is debatable), and that I was nostalgic for Donkey Kong games at that point in my life. As antithetical to My Whole Thing as it may sound though, I think it’s past the nostalgia of it now.

I look at this poem every year as a practice in curiosity. I have listened to the Donkey Kong Rap at least 8 times, I can say for sure, but the real count is probably actually like 10,000 or so. It should seem that there is nothing left to be curious about. You got Donkey Kong; you got Diddy (not that one), Tiny, Funky, Lanky, Cranky, etc. It’s all the same guys every time. But there’s always something new that I notice or latch onto. It’s like the world’s dumbest Rorschach. Where I have been in my life on any given year has shaped what I hear in the song—what memories it pulls and what it does to shape them.

This year, due to Our Horrible World, I’ve been thinking a lot about individualism and the ways it fractures every part of our lives if we let it. I guess I don’t really know how well the DK Crew all gets along now of days. Are they still having Lanky Kong show up? Did Cranky ever fuckin chill out? I don’t know, but in this song and accompanying video, frozen in time, they are together. And so I wrote a poem trying to figure out what that means. Hope you like it. Talk to you again soon.

Donkey Kong Rap at 31

i’m struck by the sheer volume of family 

members the Kongs share, celebrate. frozen

in 1999, in 64 bits, Diddy Kong shreds 

a guitar solo, and i wonder if he saved 

any of the notes for future kin, for cranky

or lanky, dixie or donkey. i’ve never seen

a family dance like that together. at in-laws’

extravagant wedding reception this month, 

i counted my steps like i was knocking 

on a closed door. each thud a song

that belongs to someone once loved,

now concealed. donkey kong pulls 

his coconut gun and the MC warns 

your bones against the pain. he seems

so eager to inflict it. we all do. we, or, he, i

mean, is a weapon that sometimes dances 

instead. hanging upside down from the family tree

i count the leaves, i count the blood cells

pooling in my head. they whisper names

i don’t remember in rhythm to the beat. today

i will take my nephew out for ice cream 

and i will wonder how old he’ll be when i die,

what names will he come to know. 

the kongs line up for a bow and the strobe

lights dapple faces in shadow. gameplay

footage takes the screen and donkey kong 

leaps into water, alone.