like a wind that burns your chest
we did it again
we  did it the same
again
soul made from milk, hold me
cover me
wrap me in your clay
like a lost child weeping in the streets
without villages, cities
without a country
or a mother
born in war
warm me in your nest under the eaves
you know? sometimes you can't be found  anywhere
and even i know we are not from here
and all is fado, - meat in the ditch
grave in the sea
i'm still looking for you everywhere
then
i return to our house in the air
in the air

The barbarians have come
and they keep coming
century after century

We are polite, we give
them high titles
They give us their laws

in a nice speech
with eloquent words
about civilisation in our wilderness

that we nota bene no longer
need to live like savages
no longer in the wilderness

The barbarians have come
and they keep coming
century after century obedient

to the right and the interests
that threaten them with the strong arm
the hard hand, and a ripped out tongue

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

Place To Be
The best place to be right now
Is not in Europe over Russia's issues
A ******* nation with 7,500 nukes
Of different types and classes
As set ready to use on Putin's order
Ukraine started it after NATO grew
Right up to Russia's borders
Now they want to turn back the clock
1997 when Russia wasn't threatened
This isn't possible so they all
Sleepwalk to Armageddon
This year or the next
It's coming soon...

Selana
She strapped on her warplane and flew away to fight
Russian jets being the enemy to be hit
Her missiles were old like her plane

But it was a good one well built
Serviced by her mechanics to perform
When ordered to do by her

She the tip of the spear just a gal
Reason I love my mistress the pilot

Defending our nation each and every day
She already shot down four or five planes
She told me it’s confusing being in combat

Things happen fast beyond comprehension
It’s comparable to driving a racing bike
I think but I’m a hacker and don’t drive

I get into Russian and Red Chinese systems
Do my art and war that way to defeat them
It focuses me while my gal is up above

Keeping us all safe from enemy actions
I want to tell the world but we cannot
We must remain a secret what we both do

This war is raging in my mind, a battle not betwixt mankind and I, but betwixt myself and darkness.
An army of ice cold fighting the fires of a hopelessly torn heart.
So much pain and sadness overwhelming the soul.
At times it feels as if they are winning, but I know if anything I will continue fighting.
Only as soon as I give up will everything be lost.