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  • Sacred Chickens Blog
  • Books, Podcasts, and Other Fun Stuff
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Review: Time Between: My Life As a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond

12/29/2020

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Time Between 
by Chris Hillman 


by Roy Peak 


Chris Hillman, as a shy kid just learning to play bass, helped to form the California band the Byrds, which by itself, would be enough to land him a spot in the history books. But Hillman wasn't content to stop there. He also was a guiding force in the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Desert Rose Band, and Manassas. For over half a century Hillman worked with such musical luminaries as Roger McGuinn, Stephen Stills, Bernie Leadon, David Crosby, J.D. Souther, Tom Petty, and Gram Parsons. In the eighties he founded the Desert Rose Band, which had a multitude of hits on the country charts.

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3 Poems: Ahmad Al-Khatat

12/21/2020

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3 Poems 


Ahmad Al-Khatat 




In The Garden of Your Heart

Plant me in the garden of your heart
Water me with your emotional tears
Until I blossom in your warm season
Just don't pick the flowers around me.

Let my seeds become your healthy
sustenance, allow me to be the fibres
on the abandoned empty dish of the
holiday, thus I would feed you happily.

Engrave your name on my chest of
the tree, and hold my green branches
Maybe you could educate me how to
dance, before autumn, split us apart.

Write your dreams on the colourful leaves
You live and die once and I live and die more
than onetime, be glad and I will be the tree
to expand my roots to reside with your breathe.
10/12/2020
Bleeding Heart Poet ©




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Review: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys.

12/19/2020

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​Clothes, Clothes, Clothes,
Music, Music, Music,
Boys, Boys, Boys
Author, Viv Albertine 

by Roy Peak


Reading Viv Albertine's biography took me to another time and place more so than any other biography I've ever read.
​
I've read multiple books on the London punk scene, (England's Dreaming by Jon Savage was informative but a little dry, John Lydon's Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs was great, but a little self-centered.) but Albertine's was the first one that really made me feel as if I had been dropped right into the midst of what was truly an ever-evolving and rather incestuous happening. Albertine gives true insight into those who populated the music scene without sounding like a name dropper. She was friends with (or went to school with, or dated, or worked for, or played in bands with) some of the most important and influential characters in England at the time, and her memories of these people come off honestly, with no sense of malice. A for instance: Most tales of infamous Sid Vicious of the band the Sex Pistols make him seem like a cartoon character or a doom-laden extra in someone else's story. Albertine manages to turn him back into a real person—no small feat. They were friends, played in a band together, and Albertine paints a rather sympathetic portrait of the iconic rock star, painting a portrait of a person much different than you would think.

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Plants of the Underworld: Death and Flowers in Ancient Greece.

12/16/2020

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Plants of the Underworld 

by Jarad Johnson 


Whenever we think of the Underworld, especially in Greek Mythology, we think of a barren wasteland, devoid of any life. In reality, the Greeks really saw the Underworld, not as hell as the Christian tradition knows, but as a multifaceted world, one where souls travelled when they died. It was much more complex and three dimensional than the hell we know today, as there are actually five regions and five rivers that run through it. But, as a gardener, I of course paid attention to the plants. There are many plants that are associated with that realm, and I thought it might fun to go through some of them. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Or abandon your plants. I will gladly take them. 

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Sacred Chickens Christmas, 2020

12/15/2020

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Happy Holidays 

by Uncle Morty
​


Wonder what the holidays look like for your Uncle Morty? Here are some photos of his holiday experience among the living. Have yourselves a wonderful and safe holiday season whatever, whenever, or wherever you celebrate! See you on the other side  (of this truly terrible year...not the other other side...at least for awhile).
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​Even Edgar has the holiday spirit this year.


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Happy Peak Week! Animal Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse

12/14/2020

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Animal Tales of the
Zombie Apocalypse

​
by Roy Peak 

So last week was Peak Week and last week Music Editor Roy Peak took over the coop. And you might be sad because you think...dang! Peak Week is over. 

But Time doesn't work that way around here!  We have no respect for its strict boundaries and one-way time-flow nonsense. So here's an extension of Peak Week. We've bent time itself for your enjoyment.


Animal Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse

Lux


From his perch on the branch of the big oak tree that stood near the pond, the big black crow could see that the buzzards were circling again. They were doing that more frequently, ever since the humans had all gotten sick, and started dying in the streets. The weird part is some of the dead humans got back up and kept on going, eating other humans or whatever unfortunate creatures that got too close to them. Weird.

The crow knew better than to eat sick humans. That was a good way to get sick yourself, but the buzzards didn't care, and had been enjoying their feasts. Until they too started getting sick. Just yesterday he had seen four sick buzzards, no longer able to fly, attacking each other until there was nothing left but broken beaks and a lot of blood and feathers. 
​
So the old crow stayed away from the sick humans, hunted the occasional frog or mouse, ate from the cornfields to the east, and scavenged nuts that fell from the trees in the park. He was an old crow, all his hatchling siblings were long gone, scattered like leaves in the wind, so he spent most of his days alone—eating, flying, watching. He used to enjoy watching the humans. They did the most interesting things: Walk their dog companions in the park. Race their metal boxes around the city streets. Spend hours in their nests, staring at their talking bright-light boxes. Coddle some of the plants in their yards, while chopping and killing others. Some of the things the humans did made no sense to the crow, maybe that’s what made them interesting.

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Book Review: Conjure Women

12/10/2020

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Conjure Women
Author, Afia Atakora 


by Jarad Johnson 


“Freedom was a word with weights. It meant deciding to stay or go.”

First novels are, by and large, a toss up. Some authors are most known for their first novels. Some authors prefer not to talk about them. They can be revelatory or they can fall short of the expectations for that genre. After reading Conjure Women, I can definitively say that Afia Atakora should be proud of her first novel. 


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Shiverwood: Nick Dunkenstein

12/4/2020

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Shiverwood

​

by Nick Dunkenstein

Cain could feel his insides twitch the deeper he got into the winter abyss encompassing around him, the squelching under each foot seemed to echo against the naked trees that almost mocked him with their ability to stay still through the bitter chill, “I wish I stayed home.”

​Looking behind him, he could see his little red car through the panorama of birch trees, mostly because it was the only colourful thing within miles. He sighed, his millionth sigh, and kept moving forward, “Damn, tires,” he mumbled. His roommate told him that he needed to look at replacing the doughnut he was riding on for weeks, “should’a listened…” he kicked what looked like a pile of snow, which turned out to be a branch rimed with hoarfrost. 

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Two Roads, and Other Poems: Paul Ilechko

12/1/2020

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Two Roads 
Electioneering
The Neighborhood
Sixty-Five Gulls
A Different Light

by Paul Ilechko

Two Roads

There is a high road     and a low road 
     that parallel the creek between them

meandering apart until they close as one      
     the high road made of dirt     

climbing rapid     then dropping down 
     and from such height has visibility 

at certain seasons     of the low road 
     through the yellow autumn     

or the sparsity of winter     to where the low 
     is pinned against the cliff beyond it     

rising such that steepness melts from it 
     and dribbling back to pool and filter 

on the asphalt     a road of Pennsylvania rotten     
     a crumbling coverage of constant liquid 

curved and black against the earth as     cutting 
     its tracery through the hills it finds 

its termination point     a village center 
     pinned in place and anchored by terrain.


 



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