Awake, coffee and shower.
Get a few flips in,
The sound of silver hitting metal.
Announcements, smiles, friends
Can you do it?
Will yourself to endure?
Round one, a panic, a chance for glory.
By round 3 the tempo sets in.
Music from the Guns and Roses game echoes in the background.
It is for sale. I’d pay to not play it again.
Hallways lined with humans, bright and friendly currently, offering smiles, exchanging locations of origin.
Someone yells in frustration at a bad drain. Conserve your energy.
After round 5 a dinner break. The sun is setting on a beautiful November day in Connecticut. And with nightfall some players’ chances of winning evaporate, but they play on, unafraid of upcoming losses.
You must continue. It is a point of pride, this challenge in the name of love of a silly game. A game we all cherish. For the friends it brought us, or for the moments of control we do desperately need in this world.
Round 7 hits, then round 8. The red countdown clock signalling how many hours we have left taunts everyone.
My companions have made a makeshift hang near the woman’s bathroom, a location chosen for its proximity to a power outlet. We eat snacks between each round until we realize we haven’t been hungry for hours. Beers are drunk, stories exchanged. Some people here are partaking in other mind altering things, some are just losing their minds as the night wears on.
We change our clothes as the evening progresses, fresh socks are a must. The cold concrete floor of the venue starts pounding on your legs from feet that have been standing for too long. But you’re up on Rack em up, an old Gottleib with weird placement for a spinner. But when you hit it your tired eyes light up once again. You know how to play pinball after all.
In the parking lot a local player is grilling hot dogs. People go to their cars for moments alone. Surprisingly things are still pleasant. But you can see the strain on even the most seasoned players. Flipping when they shouldn’t. Playing out of turn.
I suffer through two bad rounds between 2-4 am. I can’t hit any shots I normally do. But it is okay, six hours to go.
People you played with earlier start saying hi out of recognition. No one is sure if you remember their name. No one minds if you don’t . A man makes grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for donations to the Sanctums Christmas party. They taste like salvation.
The sun starts to rise. The clock says four hours left. Something strange happens to your body, its rhythm returning with daylight. You win two out of three games in the next round, just missing out on a bounty payday offered to anyone who has a perfect round in these tough conditions. Many have had perfect rounds throughout the night but I didn’t witness anyone do it twice. The final round is here. No new rounds can start after 10am. Each group here is chasing money. The winner takes home a cash prize. You would think it would become cutthroat, but it is not. Everyone is too tired to fight, or argue. We play our last games, smiling again, knowing the end is near and we are all champions.
Afterwards there is a playoff for first and second place on the game of Stars. The entire room watches both with intrigue and also with resistance to shout “Let us go home!”.
Then medals are handed out to each of the 100 players who survived the experience. No one dropped out. New friends were made, possibly new enemies.
We are warriors of pinball, clad in our hoodies and smelling like junk food and alcohol poisoning.
My son wakes up far away and sends me a text asking when I’ll be home? Three hours to a flight, and a drive after. By 9pm I respond. It turns out to be true, 39 hours awake for the glory of the silverball.
Will I ever do it again? I do not know.
But I’m glad to say I have.

Ross stared at the bank in this abandoned town and smirked. He thought about how much debt he was in before the fall. His brother had always said, “don’t take no credit, buy only what you can afford”. His drunk uncle, the outcast of the family said
“Spend their money, before you spend yours.” 

In the end, he guessed his drunk uncle was right. It wasn’t sustainable in the old economy, but Ross thought in this timeline he made out alright, not paying off his fifty year mortgage. It was a death sentence in the old world but now money had no value. The only value was finding the next meal, and gasoline was scarce, so cars were pretty much worthless.
No interest rates, and no interest in owning the next shiny thing. No swipe of the credit card. The bankers starved first after the fall. The people who were used to having nothing knew perfectly well how to make a sandwich out of whatever they found in the kitchens of the rich. 

And they danced on the graves of the CEOs of Mastercard and Visa. 

New micro #poetry out today on Five Fleas. It’s a Halloween crime #poem.
Thanks to Roberta Beach Jacobson for including it.
Free to read it and others here

https://fivefleas.blogspot.com/2025/11/morning-of-november-5-2025.html

Rocks on the train tracks,
Rocks in the river.

Bricks falling out of old towers,

Bricks holding firm on the last building in town.

And all the concrete driveways,

In all the uniformed planned neighborhoods,

Start splitting with roots climbing out to the heavens. 

Looking for grace in a place left still.

Looking for those humans who used to manicure and contain.

Free now to take back what was theirs to begin with,

The weeds grow, the trees speak to one another,

“Isn’t it nice to breathe again, and see the horizon clearly.”

So proud to have my poem The Highway in issue five of Toil and Trouble. It has a few lines in it that I absolutely adore and am glad these words found a home with a lot of other super talented people.

You can read the entire issue for free at the link. https://toilandtroublelitm.wixsite.com/magazine/

Publication Update: my poem Those Days is out now in issue two of GenXine. It’s a love letter to my youth, Billy Corgan , and so many things lost to future generations. My poem is on page 19.
FREE to read the entire issue here

https://www.jenx67.com/2025/10/genxine-october-zine.html

 The rain came down. It will be turning to snow soon. Then the world would grow even quieter. Maxine was alone with her thoughts this morning. It was a small thing to have, but she appreciated the time away from Benji and Dillion, her two sons, who were out hunting. She thought of their father, not a great man but a provider. In the old world she may have divorced him, may have had affairs. But in this world she slowly watched him get sick from diabetes, with no medicine to help him. He suffered at the end. Benji and Dillion took it all in stride, helping each other learn the skills necessary to survive. They knew nothing else, and so wanted for nothing else. Never had they had a chance to throw a tantrum at a toy store, or over ice cream. They didn’t know what any of that was. Instead their sibling squabbles were over who got to skin the rabbit, or fetch the water pail. Maxine envied them at times. Their freedom from the old world. Their freedom from consumerism. She was proud of them. She laid back against a homemade chair they had fashioned for her and listened to the rain. She would make it through this winter, and if it was her last so be it. Her sons would be fine, she knew. And in the end that was all that mattered.

Something Dumb #3 drops right now. DumDum man. limited to ten. $10 if I can hand it to you, $15 if you need it shipped. this one was a lot of fun to put together. and you can change the head for other dumdum pops whenever.. #arttoy #somethingdumb #3.75 #actionfigures

The way the fish swim upstream you’d think they didn’t understand nature. But it is the opposite of that. They want to live, to thrive even, against the current. 

The same could be said for Warren. He had lived in these lands his entire life. He could have left for an easier life, could have gone with others who gave up on this place. But it was his home. He knew how to hunt, and to fish. He could build basic things if he could acquire the right tools. And so the cold did not bother him as he left his one bedroom cabin, a light fire still burning in the fireplace on this cold October morning. The first snows would come soon, so today’s task required replenishing the food supply. Time to pick whatever was left in the garden, then head out for meat. The deer should still be around now, and if not the smaller animals would have to suffice. He hated squirrel stew, but sometimes it tasted like life. He closed the cabin door and headed out into the woods, his rifle slung over one shoulder. He stopped and looked around sensing something, but moved on a few seconds later. 

There were indeed eyes watching him from every corner of the forest. Predators waiting for the right moment, to attack, or to scavenge from his treasure. But Warren had always stopped them before, with traps, or gunshot, and they watched , waiting, for him to let his guard down. Winter was coming. They knew the pattern of the world, they could wait.

The way the waves slowly faded back as the tide went out left Ally with a sense of wonder. She watched it flow in and out, each progression a sign of something new. Small crabs appeared in one clump of sand only to go back into hiding before the next wave crashed. A crescendo of bubbles and water leaving behind shells, seaweed and whatever else it could drag to shore. The beach was quiet. No one had time for it anymore. The fishing boats took off from down the shore and the art of surfing was lost to time. Ally laid back into the sand, the sun touching her skin with crispness, and she would need to be careful not to burn. She closed her eyes and listened to the waves. How many thousands of years did they hit this beach? How many times did they recede and come back with fury when the tide returned? A rebirth every time. A rebirth. Ally thought about it all, and decided that if nature could do this like a clock, twice a day, what was stopping her? It was time to get ready for a new life. She stood, shook as much sand from her hair as she could and turned and left the ocean behind her, the sounds carrying with her for the rest of her life. The sounds of rebirth.