#horn - Hello Poetry

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

0

May 29, 2022

May 29, 2022 at 12:51 PM UTC

LonesomeDub

Master of Planets

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