One more silver dollar
buy another time a chance,
it was a time, not a dream, and

now has been, after that ever since
wisdom swept over me, my reality,

yours, in the same time, our reality
on starship earth, where the ancient
spells have been found to loose oath bound,

if you read this far, I wrote this far, and loved
the company in a same yeast state, define
state in states where war is made possible,
by treaty, representational power,
aimed at the child in the old man
being given worst, worsted wool's my first
right twist to be available in culturally npc
blend, walk by, that guy 120 fps

You could always see first he was not there.

I grew up along a gravel road
in a refitted freight house once owned by a slate mining outfit
my backyard was a rolling sprawl of giant scrap-heaps made
of spent
or unusable slate
some slabs were as big as a tool shed;
mossy promontories jabbing and jutting like dull honey- badger quills
poking out of the hills
as they sprawled in their
heaps and their heaves
and their gullies.
it was a regular shangri la for a couple young boys born in the early to mid 80s
our own private wilderness;
adolescent paradise.
sometimes I would look up from my backyard to
the tops of those slate hills and
I would see my friend Joe.
he  was older than i was and I looked up to him and
I craned my neck
looking up to him then
standing at the summit of a slate hill,
hands on his hips
perched and
hiding behind his silhouette-
the Northampton County Sun setting on behind him
blood orange scarlet and
purple gray blue were the colors of those feelings back then.
time ticked on
the way time does.
my parents got a divorce and I moved across town
there were no slate hills in that backyard
and the slate company chain linked all the hills that remained
and so there stood
a fence between me
and the wonderland I once knew.
Joe died unexpectedly some years later in  
some obscure forest of
one of the Virginias
together we nurtured some regrets suspended in between our
childhood and those
terminal woods.
together we held some memories like beads strung along a strand of silk
translucent pearls like drops of dew
condensing
out there somewhere on the
eternal web of the akasha
unknown to even Indra
unknown to all but us.
couldn’t hold on any longer
had to let it go.  

my brother gave me a pencil cactus
it seemed to flourish in my care
I had been neglecting my own needs for years
not sure I knew what my needs even were
but that cactus needed water and light
and this much i knew
and this much i provided.
it turned a red color down near the bottom of the stalk -
looked it up on google;
some kind of pencil cactus rite of passage.
after the reddening
it becomes then the stick of fire.
we were kicking up dust
over all the trails
fading on behind us
we acted like it was eyes forward only…
towns I used to know, sinking without blinking
absorbed in the horizon on behind me.
I acted like I couldn’t take my eyes off the rear view.
we pulled up and parked on
another
orange
lane
me and my stick of fire.
we landed in a
townhouse -
plenty of legroom
even had central air.
I put the cactus under a window
on the second story
didn’t think about the air vent on the floor
blowin all that dry air
and my stick of fire
withered and wrinkled up
and it shrank and shriveled
I couldn’t bring it back
and i tried
but i
had to let it go.

a giant scooped me in his hands
he was massive
40 feet tall
the war horns blew in the distance when he walked.
he
cocked back his hand and tossed me
through the air
on over the horizon
i was surfing the high skies
on thermals and the slip
streams of vultures
and peregrine falcons-
all of us then dive bombing
all the skinwalkers
like a 2 dimensional love spiral made of
peaks and valleys
and deep trenches swimming in the waters of the
mystic arts….
I held the sun in my hand for exactly one moment
but i blinked and turned
back into a clanging cymbal
a vessel of divine prophecy
going on babbling in tongues.
now a raptor eats my liver every day at noon.
I heard the sun rising in my hands for only just a moment
it was warm and held me in a present bulb of space
I breathed it in
and held it
before I had to let it go.

the architecture of
the Wyoming Valley downtowns
are like frozen songs
crumbling into puddles in a *** hole.
the steam engines and the breakers
are empty skeletons
and dry leaves.
weasels and other vermin making homes inside of holes
the soul was laid off in the vacancy
conflagrations once able to burn down entire cities
at the top of golden arche, and
now the place smells like the smothered ashes of a
single
dwindling
ember .
I yearn for a smooth good-bye
you go ahead and talk and then i’ll go-
yet i ****** up another one
open throats and
another
wire barb in the
neocortex…
I had high hopes
but I had to let it go.

I had high expectations of an early grave
“here lies such and such”
stiff in the long stillness like a possum caught inside a headlight
what a relief that would of been in the brimstone of my twenties
but the roosters kept on crowing
the morning sun kept rising
shining
death away
the big sleep was a false hope
had to let it go.

By Jordan Gee

your sister laughs at the to of her lungs
while my tears water the pillow
maybe the ashes on it will grow into a phoenix, probably not
they say the phoenix rises from the ashes
burns again
then rises again
then burns again
then rises again, and the cycle never ends
it feels like my life is going the same way
crying in bed
suicide attempts
hospital beds
and it feels like it's never gonna end
but it ends
though it doesn't feel like rising
cause it happens again
cause when I rise to the surface
above the water
it seems like I've forgotten how to take a breath
it goes up and down
but up doesn't feel good
it's not as bad as down
still, it feels confusing
scary
cause I know I will turn into ashes
yet again
your sister laughs
I cry in my bed
I keep it down so u don't hear a sound
cause I don't want you to ask me why I'm crying
I'll probably just end up lying
saying I'm fine
and I don't want your sister hearing me cry anyway
the moon whispers goodnight
but the drunk rooster
screams wake up!
I'm awake, rooster
I always am
but darling moon
I'm dead inside

Which came first:

The chicken or the egg?

Well, the **** of the walk

Of course!


You ought to know, silly kid,

That he has always ruled the roost, —

Kicking up dirt

Crowing all the live-long day

Fighting anything that he sees

All to prove his strength.


That's how he has always been, —

One day, he just wanted to take his dominance

That little step further

And so, the world gave him a hen.


So quiet and gentle

Sweet and demure

She balances him out quite nicely.


She spends most of her days

Resigned to her coop

Laying egg after egg

In her warm, dark room.

She attends to the ****

Whenever he wants her

Then becomes a living factory once again, —

Producing babies and food

Food and babies.


She does this for most of her life, —

Until she gets too old, that is.

She dries up, gets fat

And, by Sunday,

She'll be on our table for dinner.


Laughing and chewing

Clucking and squalling

We'll sink our teeth in,

Never once thinking

About how her entire lifetime

Was defined by giving

And the ****, —

Well, it won't take him long

To pick out a younger, prettier chick

To take her place.


Which came first, —

The chicken or the egg?

Obviously, it was the **** of the walk, —

The one who screams his triumph at every sunrise

The one whose meat is too tough for us to devour

The one who will never, ever die.

Everything else is just a page in his never-ending story, —

Everything else

Is merely consequential.

Roddy's Rooster, man! you couldn't
  oust her
Standing up there on his dunghill fair
Announcing to the whole world, to All
  everywhere
My ****! He's the greatest doodle doer
O! that Roddy's Rooster.

He don't need no booster, does
  Roddy's Rooster
He'd even go after the goose sir
Don't you fouster with this Rooster
You'd only lose sir
Now vamoose sir.

Very dapper and quite the scrapper
Patrolling his perimeter
Strutting around the farmyard pound
Invariably, henhouse bound
If you were to meet him
It'd be "Put up your dukes sir
Me! I'm Roddy's Rooster".

With his tail feathers all fluffed up
Like a feather duster
And his chest all puffed out
Quite the Dandy and always randy
What a Suitor that Roddy's Rooster
And O! what a Wooer, that wooey
  doodler.

                         I I

He came a cropper though one day
When he fell in the Hopper
Now he's a good deal shorter
And not half as cocky as before,
Now he sits on his wall lamenting his
  fall
Thinking of the days when he used to
  have a ball
Has Lady Luck that Grand Old Duck
  deserted him I wonder.

Sad to see, now he's a bit gammy
More Bandy than Dandy
He still South's in the Summer
But has doubts in the Winter,
Now he likes to crow his woes and
  lows away
Climbing up onto his dunghill, he
   greets the day
But now in a high shrill falsetto
  voice
He sings  in a whole different way
" I've been round the Ringer but I'm
  still quite a Dinger
**** a Doodley Doo"
Now... now he's a ****** Blues singer!

O! that Roddy's Rooster.
Roddy's Rooster Yeeaahh!