Minecraft

M. I. Devine

This week we’ve got something a little different, a cinepoem (that’s a video-poem or a video and a poem) from M. I. Devine, with the song lyrics posted below as our poem of the week. Take a listen to “Minecraft” on Spotify or other platforms.

And watch the cinepoem / music video:

Minecraft

Kids play Minecraft. 
Hey, look, Dad! We built a church!
Do you think this could be more painless
if we could say just where it hurts?

And look, we built Jonestown, 
Waco, Ruby Ridge!
(And David Foster Wallace wonders 
if the light stays on in the fridge.)

And down there, Dad, is Astroworld 
where Kubla Khan decrees
that all the nine year olds in Autotune 
sing, sing, sing, “I can’t breathe.”

Dad, we built an abyss.
Do you think we could exist
if life were less like life
and more like this?

Dad, we built a wall
through the heart of it all.
Dad, we built a home.
Everyone lives in one alone.

Flash mob thrillers 
right through the Louis Vuitton. 
And the knock-off Gucci’s on sale
the same street the church and the no-knock warrant’s on.

You can find a diamond in a mine.
You can walk upon the sea.
You can pray in church the dead won’t do 
everything the dead want to do to me.

Dad, we built it all, we built it all.
The snotgreen seas!
Look, Dad, there you are, you’re in love, 
and there’s Mom, you’re 16.

Dad, we built an abyss!
Do you think we could exist
if life were less like life
and more like this?

Dad, we built a wall
through the heart of it all.
Dad, we made a home.
Everyone lives in one alone.

Dad, we built a road
but we don’t know where it goes.
Look, Dad, we built a church.
It took so much work.

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M.I. Devine is the author of Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry, winner of the Gournay Prize, a book of “linguistic playfulness… blending aesthetics and theology” (Commonweal). A recent poem, “Eulogy for Dada (Who Loved to Waltz),” was featured in Echolocations by A. E. Stallings, and a new autofictional work will appear in Image in 2026. He co-founded Famous Letter Writer (with Ru, his wife); the art pop project has released Warhola and is currently releasing DADAMAMA. Their work has appeared in many places, including NPR Music and American Songwriter. Stream FLW on all the platforms.

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Poet’s Note:

“Minecraft” is the third single from Dadamama (i) by Famous Letter Writer–and, yes, another collection of songs, Dadamama (thou), will follow shortly after. Relationships, you might notice, are important to our art pop project, the music we make, the cinepoetic visions we share. My poetry, but especially my songwriting, is always relational, allusive, joking, dialogic, even. Eve ribbing Adam. It’s hardly a private poetics: much of my work from Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry to these songs explores something like a pop poetics. What is pop? Easy. Pop is saying something deep in a stupid way. (To say something stupid in a deep way, of course, is to be an academic.)

Anyway, I was happy with “Minecraft” and how it went off the rails. It was inspired by my kids teasing me that they should be allowed to play the game forever because they were, I guess, essentially rebuilding civilization. If I told them to wrap up playing, they’d be all, “Hey! we’re building an art museum in here, pal! Are we just supposed to stop this cathedral?” That was the joke. But from it emerged something stranger, wilder, I hope, a meditation on the fact that we make because we are made. It’s a leap of faith, making, creating (note Yves Klein’s leap in the film). And what we make, well, look on it and weep, you know?–it can be downright dystopic, it’s Travis Scott’s Astroworld, there are snotgreen seas, but, wait, there are also glimpses of us–of love. There you are, do you remember? You’re 16. There’s a night these kids are trying to fill with light. The verses were easy enough. The chorus waited until I brought in a rhyme from Michael Robbins (abyss / like this) and that unlocked a new level of, well, depth. Because pop is deeper than we suspect and more superficial than we can take. It’s the skin and the soul. And writing is a sure way to lose control. That’s what craft does. It frees us. Only then can we connect.

Mary’s Note

When Michael approached me to see if I was open to posting a cinepoem, I was, immediately, because, why not? This is the sort of thing we artists can and should do. Musically, this is a funky mix: I hear a little Lou Reed, some Elvis Costello, a bit of Dylan and Bleachers/Jack Antonoff. Luma noted that one of the compelling aspects of this project is how it gives us a sense of “the sacred impulse” in children, their desire, need even, to create, to make. We all have it, of course, but it often gets beaten out of us. Our age seems to say: why would you do anything for the love of it? Money, fame, those are good reasons to do a thing. It’s nonsense, of course. Love is the reason to do a thing.

“Minecraft” mixes the “contradictory” parts of our nature: the sacred and profane, the high and low, the pop and the fine art impulses. A lot of people blather on about those contraries and how there’s a way that they come together in the incarnation, but many of those same people can’t handle the crowd at a McDonald’s on a Tuesday morning. Or they excuse the poor quality of their work as “embracing the contradictions.” Or they give us smut dressed up as something fine and say, look how clever we are. “Minecraft” does not do that. “Minecraft” takes what’s human, what we can make, and says: this is what the good in you aspires to.

I love the opening scene in the video where Michael’s son asks: Is it good? I imagine many of us will stand before God one day and ask: Was it good? Was I good? In “Minecraft,” the father’s response is a video that melds the son’s innocence with the brokenness and, importantly, wonder and beauty in the world. God’s response: We give him a few chords, a couple of lines, a few good acts and he gives us the whole world, and eternity, if we’ll take it. And, yes, it takes so much work. That’s what we’re here for, I think: the good work.