I was mad when they put Neville
in a match with a television star,
because look at him,
look what that bastard could do.
I was mad when he wrestled Aries
at WrestleMania
before WrestleMania had even started,
and we spent years saying wasted,
like we knew what a career was owed.
Later, I was mad at him.
There were rumors he wouldn't lose to Hangman,
and I believed enough of them
to argue with strangers about honor
in a business built on pretending.
I hated the Death Riders.
God, I hated the Death Riders.
Every week I wanted the story over,
wanted PAC somewhere else,
doing something better.
Funny, the things we get angry about
when we think there will always be another Wednesday.
Tonight there is only a photograph.
Not Neville.
Not PAC. Not The Bastard.
A man.
And beneath his face,
two years telling me I can never be mad at him again.
Joshua Walker is an independent poet whose work blends formal craft with raw emotional intensity. His poems have appeared in Potomac Review, SoFloPoJo, Solarpunk, and numerous other literary journals. With over 310,000 followers across social media, Joshua’s voice bridges traditional and contemporary poetics, weaving sharp imagery with musicality and wit. He explores themes of resilience, identity, and human complexity, always attuned to the tension between line and sentence.
Editor’s Note: Joshua included this note with this submission, and I feel like it belongs here as well:
I wrote “Things I Was Mad at The Bastard About” shortly after the news of PAC’s passing broke. Like a lot of wrestling fans, I’d spent years being mad about how he was booked, mad about matches and storylines, and sometimes mad at PAC himself. Then suddenly there was a photograph of a man with two years beneath his face, and none of those things mattered anymore.
The poem came out of that feeling.
