superimposition of celestial ampersand:

a continuity of all things
  stars hanging loose in the pupil
of this deadbeat word.

typhoons in a swirl of tempestuous ballet,
dogs shivering in the blue cold,
biting their canine integument the way
scarabs would, sinking in a temporal flotsam-way within tectonic display
    of text

hectares of blank stares bringing
to life lysergic field of black birds.

and then some

equal number of evocativeness:

continuing on into the ground
are the bones warm in their compost.
the sudden fragrance of rat ****
appeals to the masses.
too much laughter in flooded thoroughfares pockmarked by
the vehement jam of staccato jackhammer.
choking us is today's headline
in supreme obbligato - its stench
reeks of libidinal perfume etched
in the flesh of the rigmarole.

one filthy day in Manila.

those quiet
lonely nights
when long shadows crawl over defeated days
and the red orange sun drowns beneath dark waves
a resonant loneliness
washes over me
dulling love and light
and hope
like the slow deliberate movement of the clock in the kitchen, hands that mark the passing time between jade scarabs
like the soft lilt of a sparrow left outside my window, alone in the twilight
as a church bell doles its distress, slow and deep in the distance, breaking the still darkness with its lament
water cannot cover the spectre of memory
I pour another whisky

The soon to be beached meadows shimmers
as the heightened sun dehumidifies  the outlying cornfields
evaporating the ground cover.
Scarabs appear postulating
the broken bonds of  farmer
and nature.
In the combustible sands
Great things will be birthed.

In the caste of what the fir trees denoted what should be or what should not be,
I clasped the fig twigs and watched them split as if to say that all must come to an end.
And in the end, who can the charred leaves blame if there should be tire rods and hubcaps strewn  
                               across the forest's floor?

After totaling the costs of what should not be,
the last mast of yesterday's trade boat could skiff along the shore,
with flag flailing like the playground children's hands.

Irrationality piquing: birds dip and dive like a boxer's fists made of shadow
from one powerline to the next.
Training for the changing, biting winds, watching the unconscious cars staring.

And the skiff oozing through the unmentionables littered in the creek : what will
become of him?

Lodged in stale, fossil bones -- floundered between the swingset and the droning, dusty traffic at 3 a.m.
Metamorphic scarabs stolen from the gusts and pants of too much play.
Basketballs stained with carrion, precarious gusto in the wake of money suckling and ripping alongside                            
        the skiff.

Cross here with two pennies.

Goaded by the solitary abandonment of the 1930's, the used ******'s mouth gaping open like hungry carp, dusty trails of light from the past lamplight hanging in the air

Birds measured up along the powerlines, moving mindlessly along with the flock
Bird drones, feathery spines
Birds perched along the playground.
Bird play so far as to say
        does this not look familiar?

Bobbing, weaving, slathered in cadence and involuntary muscle jerks.

First we were here
Then we were not.

This is for those of you that are hopelessly addicted to deeper meanings...
Where you examine the steps you take in the day under a microscope to see
the cracks scrambling restlessly up your legs to find your weak spot.
Your **** of aroused curiosity can only be stimulated via
lightning struck snowy powders dripping gently down your throat and tickling your brain-stem
until you laugh at the crows poking their heads in your back pockets.
They burn holes in your suicidal tendencies like kids playing with matches
for the first time behind the shed.
When your **** gets hard from the fire burning too close to your retinas and
enflaming the world as you knew it, charred and raining ash on the dead roses
that you planted and forgot to water.
**** them, these pilgrims of anxiety crawling across your arms like
stranded orphans in the desert, where the nearest well is spiked with adrenaline aged in
a dying cactus.
Wow you are dark tonight..
As if the dandelion seeds you set free flew back and tried to choke you.
Where are the heart tickling epiphanies now?
Sitting out on break and blowing cigarette smoke into nearby passing baby strollers?
I am not expecting you to like this.
I am just a deluded witch doctor dissecting your brains and attempting to pry out the tumors.
Like an excommunicated jedi knight using his mind to strike flint together.
The sparks smile and dance like college kids on ecstasy, not quite realizing that they are drowning in the undertoe.
They revel in the nostalgic numbness.
Only an IV of sweet lime juice can sustain such wilted leeches.
When lacking in vitamins, your skin is a papyrus to bury under the nile, and
watch from the hills as kids of 2100 and later search for WiFi to connect their burnt out forebrains to.
Coughing up several old moth eaten sweaters that you stuffed away
when your new girlfriend came over.
We hide our pasts like kilos under the coca cola shipments, and no matter
how far you ride the rails, the rats still nest and chew apart the cables that
keep the whole train locked together.
And why is it that we secrete our secrets in our sweat, and cover it up with
cheap deodorants?
Our catch-phrases mask the stagnant breath of our restless nature.
Humans, the bugs in our systems trying so hard to shout out to us that we don't really exist.
Thoughts as fragile as smoke could never support our weight if we chose to
colonize the moon and dig for diamonds in her eyes.
We may find that our stain-glassed windows keep out most of the light, while
preaching to keep our eyes closed and heads held close to the ground.
The civilized dances we partake are only nervous ticks of robotic
drones drilled on overtime.
And we think that these words useless, like grains of sand to let trickle out of your hands.
Our words mean nothing!
Even though you might have felt something in the last five minutes as these
black scarabs have peeled away at your comprehension.
You paint pictures with only black and blue and expect
fresh tongues to offer you green and purple instead.
But how can you expect anything other than the bruises you beat into the walls.
Like magnets on strike, you expect the world to just "let it go."
But I'm not about to rely on that weaker force to guide us.
The paths of unprecedented unraveling is where we are heading.
Where gravity is so pre-"concious-cocreation" and the last street light alive
will keep on whispering its salty sentiment.
You and I are not so different, although we profess to keep our distance
and fear too long of eye contact, as if a moment of silent connection
triggers the virus warnings and ***** up your downloads.
****..
All I wanted was a light-hearted comedy and all you had stocked up in your
dvd cabinet was a bunch of black and white ***** films.
You said the dark side makes you appreciate the light, but every night i hear
those last beaten breaths, limping across the dark hallway with their fingertips sliding
quietly along the walls.

i cracked the code. god'll forgive me. ' you ' shut up ! do not cross
where the scarabs calf their adders
be more black than the last
vast strip of night
across miles and miles
of wide expanse
be more
advanced and
water tight.

The bodies are buried
in boiler rooms below
precipitous buildings.

Tipped with gargoyles,
scabbed with windows,
the superstructures rise
on cords of carbon steel.

Inside miraculous husks,
the elevators lift and fall,

interminably.

Antiquated carriages
click like scarabs
on ropes and pulleys.

With interiors lit
by faint buttons,
the listless coffins

circulate our remains
behind gypsum walls.

When the elevator doors glide open,
an emerald chime sings your name.

It’s

Not a token drawn around the neck, but

A

Jewel upon the finger that will forever dream

Sad

Memorys branded into the very tissues; a

Thing

Made to torment the mind until the day comes

When

Our earthly mother calls us.

The

Fruits of our nature dry a bond that's

Only

Broken by the lord himself. My cries, the

Sounds

of Hades in the pounding of my death

Are

scarabs that peel the skin away in

Footsteps

Treading across my soul, leaving scars

Of

Which I may never again love.

The

Thorns grow in craters of damages

One

Has, with no way back; leave

You

Without the means to help and cannot

Love

without something in return.

Walking

out will not chase me

away

Arab scarabs
wielding scabbards
staggered with hilts
laid waste to
idle Cherubs in
garments
embroidered
like quilts.

They're off kilter,
with no filter, and
wear stilts where
leaves wilt, sir
please lilt yr
tactless

anachronisms
through fractured
refractive prisms
to help the mind
unbind from
shop, office, and
factory prisons

Listen:

there's a
penitent androgyne,
speaking
sentence in pantomime
as though rhyme
were no longer
a kind of
berated
creative crime: But

who
the
hell
CARES?!?!?!?!

Scarabs dance impositions across your navel,
flattening themselves out in honour of your belly,
as I am watching your pulse spell out cryptograms
just below your pink
hairless
skin.

I lap the insects up like a patient kitten, lingering too long
(just long enough)
as the tips of my fingers press down on your
pulsing
hieroglyphics.

They abound this season
Flapping their wings
Blocking the sunshine
Carrying bugles and ostrich feathers,
Through their yellow teeth
The heat of yerba mate radiates
They make no distinction between
The dignitary and the mobster
Between the esteemed and the rascal
Only scarabs pass them by without reckoning
We still hear the drums in all parts of the village;
Drums made in a country not far from ours.

We are in the presence of the Holy Matron
We sanctify
Dust has settled over her garb
Having buried the phoenix,
Her children have left their houses
And some lost their direction
We strayed from one another
And the paths of the honest
Were blurred
We had our fill of worries for a thousand years
Despite the limitation of time.

Here we are at the bottom of the riverbed
And cannot row our way back to the source spring
When the day is short
So is the night.

To you Lord is my hymn and plea:
Will there be salvation,
Will it rain
Will there be sunshine
And will the birds
Flutter their wings again?

Wisely invested in mammon, secure,
I repose in my splendor, moronic—
bejeweled with scarabs, jackals, and cats.
My dividends total pharaonic.

In a land of lizards and beetles and sand
stand the ruined temples of the
third generation after the plague.
And once,
where the men made of gold
worshipped the Sun I am told
there was a terrible death laid upon them.
Those men from the mines
who mined gold for the men made of gold
were the only ones saved.
Slaves made from tin and from pewter weighed in with their wails
but the dark angel sails only
in one direction
that of destruction and
correction.
Now on the dune under the laugh of the moon
the scarabs and the lizards hold sway
and there is nothing in the way of each day
except ruins.

In halls of dust-speckled relics
In labyrinths filled with prehistory
There is a room where scarabs still creep
Where the Great Pharaoh forever sleeps

Books of the Dead are affixed to the walls
Ankhs are clutched tightly by sculpted Gods
There is a room where mysticism yet seeps
Where the Great Pharaoh forever sleeps

Watchful falcons seem to soar overhead
The Sands of Time are forced to retread
There is a room where one body lays deep
Where the Great Pharaoh ends an eternal sleep

I open my lungs to the moist dirt between
sidewalk cracks.

Atoms severed  from the whole transcend
previous existence, take flight and enter my

body evaporating through tunnels, sinus
storm-drains built beneath my bones.

Particles intertwine themselves around
rooted hair shafts, excite neurons

electrical synapses, the sinew of sense
and memory ingraining fleshy shores of

my brain with cartography not yet understood.

So I too one day amputate this existence, navigate
to the peel covering concrete entombed earth

becoming dust, mud levees holding back waters
swollen by the pull of moon, slow earth thrown

to the casket. The comital of broken deadfall
in winter buried in un-named forests turned

black earth, turned home to black shelled
scarabs, turned nest.

Let the earth do this turning lament for me
let me be food for hungry worm mouths

the secret held between the hands of mice
warm within their family den, to the beak of young

howls turned night hunters, let me feed their
wingspan, nourishing fascia, the miracle

consensus between hard muscle fiber and
soft feather wherein miracle of flight is born.

Let the earth kneed me into nucleus seed
from where its hands are born,

forms sinuses from hollowed trunks and
lines its bones with me

The People cry out
  Who will save us?
We are buried alive with deception

Dwelling like beasts in spoils of luxury
Creeping around like blighted scarabs
    growing ever stronger with rancid mouthfuls of cheat.

King of neither world
Hurler of hopes
Admonisher of dreams
Do not silence our awakening

You must save us!

I am Ha-ha
  am I to be loved by you?

It is I alone who can strike
a single chord

[though strumming with puny hands I too have limits]

Like so many drops of sweat
trickling down your spine, I caress.

In my kingdom fear reigns
   each of you
a harnesser of the means

know that I have not come to fulfill but to destroy

******, killing, stealing
Mankind will be churned underground to be reborn with burning flesh

consummate death
thy liberty is dead!

So decrees  Ha-ha

The People whimper
  do we even deserve you?

In the graveyard of dreams
fog whirls around your mutilated carcass
I have been in this state for too long
brittle nails & worn hair, my drawn-out smile

I open your grave to find Pandora's box
your words choke me
turning my teeth a deeper shade of red

scarabs escape
they bore into my face
infiltrate my deepest memories
I surrender

day of the big extraction.
lower left molar
tooth number 18.
interesting chakra, that one.
sometimes a physical removal of energy is needed
to let the nadis breathe.
I got a double hernia repaired about a year ago.
anesthesia administered by St. Michael the Divine.
a whole granthi must have broken loose
while I was underneath the knife.
energetic knots all in a tangle in the sacral
burst into a cloud of scarabs and sanskaras
like a flock of a thousand white doves released
at a Louisiana Jazz Funeral.

the first time I sank into samadhi was late February 2021.
I was sitting in the lobby at Horizon Dental
third floor of the Guild building,  Wyoming avenue, Scranton, PA.
I was sipping coffee I got from the 1st floor
from the
Heaven and Earth Cafe
when my -
eyes rolled up into my skull
when my -
heart  buckled under the beauty
when my -
brain found its new home in a vat of warm static.
I felt like the Benedictine on the cross I got
from the christian trinket shop attached to the new cafe downstairs.
holy holy holy. glory be to god

this tooth has been giving me agita for two years
ever since the medicine
and the accident
and the hospital.
ever since I broke the Causal Egg.
novicaned
root canalled
capped with a cracked temporary
and now just a fractured stub of calcium
with three roots instead of two.

It only took a couple skillful shots to the face
before I couldn’t feel a thing.
except for twenty five minutes
of drilling
and cracking
and prying
and extracting the one thing that kept me grounded
when I was sitting in the common area of the 6th floor
of the CMC, Hill Section, Scranton, PA.

©️  Jordan Gee

So, I’m no good at online dating / That is to say I do this to myself / After a couple days of messaging, a woman asks me to write her a poem / I see this as a good thing / We have a 97% match according to the algorithm / And she says she likes the beetles / And I say I don’t like typos / I tell her I will write her a poem / And I won’t give that poem to you because it was for her / I will tell you, it began with dung beetles / I waxed poetic about how they carry **** around for three things: / love / food / and a home. / Of course I don’t know that dung beetles experience romantic love / Or I don't know that / But I do know they stare at the stars / They are the only other animal on this planet we’ve found that does that / I wonder if they — too — get lost in fireflies / There is a place in Tennessee I haven’t  been to yet / but my brother lives close by / and the fireflies there, they synchronize their lights while mating / I compare this to the planets lining up / How people assign such power and luck to small dots in the sky / How people assign luck to the dots on a lady bug’s back / How people assign luck to lady bugs / How lady bugs got their name and are perceived as a religious symbol / So are dung beetles / I’m sorry — they preferred the term scarabs / They used to push the sun across the sky / We used to give such power to such small things / And all they are doing is searching for is: / love / food / and a home. / The poem I send her is filled with Beatles references, too / Because I wanted her to know I actually knew what she was saying / Because all we need is love / Because all I really want to do is hold her hand / Because I'd just seen a face I can't forget / She doesn’t like the joke / Or the poem / Or me / Or I assume / because she never messages back / I still hope she finds those three things / Love / Food / and Home.

At the beach or the park it is appropriate to lie on the ground.
To sit still and do nothing but absorb the cries of gulls or the hum of an airplane or other distant sounds and smells and sensations.
But you can absorb those things standing up, and here on the ground
there is a world you can only explore if you put your eye up next to it.
At the beach it is not uncommon, when aimlessly watching people, to espy someone
(a child more often than not)
running their fingers through the sand,
transfixed in the singular feel of it and-if they are looking-
its infinite aesthetic.
Each grain is a world anew and you would not know it unless you
put your face right up to the ground and looked.
At the park it's much the same.
Two-inch fields of grass give away to dirt plateaus,
and it turns out there are a thousand little scarabs-
black & green & red jewels scurrying in the understory.
Twigs as big as logs lie haphazardly, and there a leaf is
wilting, wilting, wilting
for weeks or forever.
I knew a woman once who did not wait for the beach or the park.
In her observation of the ground she was infinitely delighted.
There was always something new or unexpected just waiting to be found if only the
right mind was there to appreciate it.
Tesoras she called them.
She would hold up a piece of dead grass as if it were a seashell pointing out a fold or dip that created a shadow just… so.
“Tesora”.
Now sometimes when the viscera of my mind have trouble digesting a certain memory
I lie on the floor and stare at the veneer of dust,
a tangle of hair,
or the husk of a stink bug and in my mind I see a leaf
wilting, wilting, wilting.

fog whirls around your mutilated carcass
I have been in this state for too long
brittle nails & worn hair, drawn-out smile

I open your grave to find Pandora's box
your words choke me
turning my teeth a deeper shade of red

scarabs escape
bore into my face
& infiltrate my deepest memories
I surrender

It’s August here in New Zealand which means it is the middle of Winter. It rains almost every day here during winter.
Firewood piled outside the door is getting low so I earmarked two hours to barrow split wood from an auxiliary pile, stacked against the rear wall of the house, to the depleted pile, under cover of weather, at the house frontage.

The wood had been there for many months so it was full of spiders. Big spiders with brown chevrons on the back of their abdomen, Wolf spiders the locals call them, they can give you a nasty bite but they have insufficient venom to harm humanity. These spiders inhabit the underside of the split wood, they build silky white webs that resemble pouches. The webs catch inquisitive insects that search for food in the woodpile. The insects become entangled in the webs and the spiders pounce upon them and eat them. I saw plenty of evidence today of both the big spiders and what remains of their insect meals. Shells of the scarabs epidermis actually, all of the soft innards ****** out by the hungry spiders.

Also in the woodpile were several female Beech wasps, brightly colored little Hymenoptera with yellow and black banded stripes, with fearsome, sharp stingers protruding from the very end of the abdomen.  These wasps were not sheltering in the woodpile from the falling rain, they were hunting for the big Wolf spiders. Arachnids ten times their size and equally as combative as the hunting wasps.

Undeterred by size and ferocity the wasps attack the huge spiders without hesitation, Make no mistake, war is waged here for should the spider lance the wasp with its fangs the wasp will die an agonizing death, but if the wasp manages to deftly spear the spider with its stinger, a powerful venom will be injected into the spider immediately paralyzing it…..but the venom doesn’t actually **** the spider, it immobilizes it. The female wasp then penetrates the bulging abdomen of the Arachnid with her ovipositor and lays all of her eggs inside the paralyzed creature. Once egg laying is completed the female wasp disengages herself from the spider and flies away to die.

Almost immediately the wasp eggs hatch inside and the little white larvae begin to consume the living internals of the spider. They continue to eat the fresh edibles until they metamorphosize into young adult wasps which chew their way out of the, now dead, husk of spider and fly away to seek a mate which in turn, once fertilized, will ultimately hunt yet another unfortunate spider to host the fearsome hatchlings of her own busy brood.

As I stacked the wood in the front alcove I paused for a few moments to ponder the miracle of life and death enacted, unsuspectedly, in the battleground of my back woodpile….and marveled at the absolute drama of it all.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
20 August 2023