We are tempered like steel in the dreams of others.

We have been fired with flame and beaten with hammers.

The dreaming people have boots made of elephant hide, of giraffe hide.

They leave striped footprints in the snow that even the blind could follow, footprints that make noises like sad dogs.

This is why the winter air tastes sweet, like music.

This is why there are words in the clouds, in the rocks.

The steel of our bodies has been hammered and folded, time and again, but it is only a dream.

This isn’t living, we are all just inside a dream of someone else, someone we do not even know.

The harmless white lie.

Why do ghosts come out at night

She asked

Because ghosts can’t see in the light

I lied

Just like we can’t see in the dark

Comforted now

She closed her eyes to the darkness

And deeply slept

You are holding the face of the moon in your hands.

You are tracing the arc of her lips with a gentle finger, your slightest touch is a caress.

This is the church of faraway dreams, the temple of her private smile.

This is the night with a breath of fresh snow.

Your life is a trance, and that which you think of as your own soul is the wind, peacefully blowing a hole in the sky.

She is the moon, and you cannot hold her for long, and being wise, and being quite kind, you let her go.

And so she rises, yes, she rises up to heaven, where she shines for you.

-In memory of Kenneth Patchen-

Weeping and grief.

Trees
Have no tear ducts
But that could change

If humans
Don’t stop clear-cutting
Tear ducts could evolve

Paid subscribers continue below.

Read more

Her face could be so incredibly sad.

for Nena, 1927 -2013

She carried her disappointment in the roundness of her face, in the deep, dark hollows of her eyes.

And then, if she laughed, the stars came out to enrich the discomfort you felt at her suffering. Happiness. Sorrow. Like flipping a light switch.

And she worried, often very late into the night; she would pace the floor and wring her hands, and peek out from behind the curtains as if the answer was hiding outside in the darkness.

That face - so worried, sad, for so many long years.

I felt that I never pleased her, that I had failed as a son somehow, although I deeply loved her, and told her so every day.

When she was dying I was trying to get home, to be with her, from across half of a continent.

She slipped away when I was halfway home, Nena was often impatient like that. Well, always.

My sister got me on my phone as I changed planes and I told Nena that I loved her one final time, in fact, those were the last words that she heard here on the mortal plane.

She whispered back, “Love.” Just that, and then my mother shook off the weight of her body and rose up, escaping to that which awaits us all, eventually.

The full moon of November.

— the Republican moon —

Everyday
The national debt goes up
Humans rights go down
And a pointless war goes on

Even the daytime
Is pustular and rancid

Hope is a boil or a cyst
That never gets lanced

Time is just a prison sentence

Vincent Van Gogh knows that the colors are magic.

Fields on fire with a rage of gold. The blue of the vase resting on the cluttered wooden table. Sunflowers that shine out with a glory to match even the sun. Van Gogh is watching the exhausted mother beside the roaring fireplace who drifts off to sleep holding her innocent baby. Van Gogh is listening when those golden stars speak to the swirling nights, when the postman’s beard flows like the mane of a lion. When the cypress reaches up to heaven the way a fallen angel might reach up to be touched by the hand of God. The ear. The bullet. He said, “This sadness will last forever.” And so it does, Vincent, so it does.

The heart was left alone in the snow.

Bitter. Bile ridden.

A nervousness of death, like that day when the sun folded and slept cowering in the clouds.

The hard, crusted, bone-end of winter, frosty and silent.

Men without fathers who walk with nowhere to go.

Women who stand waiting at the closed and rusted gate.

The sperm whale of night that brings no relief, no balm.

From the blackened entrance-way you watch, and the clock that has been ticking, stops.

“If only there was more time,” you think.

But there isn’t any more time. Time is what you lack most of all.

Finally you turn away, and go back out again, your quick footsteps crunching in the frosty snow.

Adios,
James

Subscribe now

You are welcome in the church of flora and fauna.

This is not the church of your grandfather.
There are no Jesuits or Dominicans, no Bishops
or Cardinals, no cathedrals, no money, and no Pope.

This is the church of flora and fauna;
the church of the sun, the moon, and the stars.
The church of the land, sky, water, and fire.

We in attendance venerate everything that lives,
from amoeba to animals to Redwood trees.
We revere life, including ant and bees.

The blood and body of Christ are left alone,
not ingested. We sip water to bring the Universe
into ourselves. We respect the food chain.

This church needs no buildings, and exists
in nature, in spirit, in the mountains and the sea,
in the fields and the woods.

The wind and the rain are our blessings
and our gifts. The changing of the seasons
and the stations of the moon are our calendar.

We don’t really even need names;
what is a name but weight? In the long run,
a name exists to mark your grave.

Join us in this church if you so wish.
You needn’t give up your grandfather’s church.
It is fine to pray to both God and the Universe.

The ways of faith do not contradict in the end,
they bless. Just bring your kindness along
when you come. Don’t we exist to be kind?

The internal dialogue of a weak Vice President.

President Orange Face
has two Egg McMuffins and a Diet Coke
every morning at the crack of ten o’clock
when he wakes up.
No one among the obsequious staff
will say, “Mr President, this is bad
for an overweight old man.”
Including me, I remain silent.
It’s the bland leading the bland.
This is why most of this staff
and his own aorta voted against him.
I wasn’t the only one.

The night of two moons and the forest.

There are two moons tonight
if you count the reflection
on the surface of Putah Creek.

The line of trees along the creek
are reflected as well; it seems
almost like a forest.

Standing up higher on the bank
I am not reflected on the water.
An owl hoots. I am not alone.

Then let the weather be my guidepost.

A week of scorching days
followed by three outstanding days.
If it is cool again tomorrow
I shall claim a new life and start over.
And if it is hot I will do the same.

Read more

Be as quiet as though you were not here at all.

Still, and quiet, as steady as a bee. Born on the cusp of a new era, a new silence. Be as steady as a winter rain, as light as thought. Sleep easy. Let your soul be filled with the depth of all things, touched by that thing we know as life. No end, no beginning, just that which is. Let the world slow down, and then stop. Yes, be still and quiet. As steady as a bee.

As steady as a bee.

I wasn’t born this way to hide.

I will stand right here before god and the cold, dark wind. In this spot. here. I am welded to the earth in this body, shielded by the stone of my flesh and kept warm by fire inside me. I won’t yield or pretend, or wear another face in the moment of silence. I alone own this life and this death, and no one else. What else is there? I refuse to live under the yoke of fear, and I refuse to die differently than I lived. What good is courage if you don’t use it?

Yes, in 1974 I kissed that girl in the photograph.

Her dog watched us, making sounds like an accordion. The sky was an orange blanket, draped over the world, smelling like automobile exhaust. Marijuana may have been involved. I said something to her that I wanted to sound hopeful, but it didn’t give the girl any hope at all. I no longer remember her name, but I do remember that she liked to move her head a lot when she kissed, too much, in fact. I was confused. I tried to match the head movements, and it became a weird head moving contest. I thought that this might deserve an unusual poem and fifty years later I tried to write it.

The dogs in our eyes look like us.

They are howling to the noises of the night. The world itself is a dog, trotting off without a care. Your diamonds and your dreams are nothing. Only two things matter; what you have done and what you will do next. No one is keeping score in this match. The grass on the pitch is tall and wild. The weeds are reaching to heaven. The dogs in our eyes piss wherever they wish. The world itself is a dog, full of folly and madness. Go now, this is over.

Adios,
James

Tilghman Island Beach

Tilghman Island, Maryland, in the Chesapeake Bay.*

The boy washed up on the narrow beach, lavender and dead, nibbled on by crabs. The summer morning was beautiful and clear, already hot an hour after sunrise, humid, and the girl was sweating when she found him. He was no older than her, and she wanted to turn away, to run, to be anywhere else at all, but she couldn’t, as death pulled her closer. Perhaps they had liked some of the same things, music and television shows and movies, and the island is small, they might have known some people in common, gone to the same places. Lying on his back, his dead eyes stared up toward heaven, as if waiting for god to claim his soul, his chewed fingers were curled and empty. One shoe was missing. Although she was frightened and very young, the girl knew what needed to be done, that which one soul does for another, and she knelt beside the boy’s cold body and said a simple prayer, “Watch over him now, please.” And all of this as the tide went back out and the sun rose higher in the hot, cloudless sky.

*From a news story, long ago.

We have lost nothing to sorrow that cannot be found again.

Just unfold the map of living. Time is liquid, and flows like a river, or like blood. We gather things in our arms that we might wish to use in the next life. What things? A memory. A breeze. The pleasant sounds of birds in the tall trees. Those things that we love are treasures in the damp basement of our souls, and that door to that basement is never locked. Does the door seem hard to open? Then lean a shoulder against it and push with your weight. Hope for better days and go back to work. One day our souls will leave these bodies and rise. Sorrow passes, or at least it can pass.

Share Book Of Jobe

The suffering, yes, we all have a cross or two to bear.

You are not special. You don’t get a pass on these things. Even those who sleepwalk through life suffer from the occasional bad dream, stumble, and fall flat on their ass. Will you just lay down and allow the burden to crush you? This is your life. There are no practice runs. Reach inside yourself for some courage and wear it like a favorite jacket. You might just do a little better than you think. Don’t worry so damn much. Every night comes to an end. The sun always comes back up and will do so right up until the supernova. And then there is this; you are only as alone as you make yourself be.

I dreamed that I stomped across the fields of the living and the dead.

These feet are hammers for both the mighty and the weak. I was deeply sleeping to the color blue and dreaming the names of my dead friends, my dead family. It’s a growing list. Some things of life we carry deep inside of us, especially in dreams, no matter how much time has passed. Like love. When our loved ones die, we carry them on in our dreams and in our hearts, and my heart is huge, as big as a lung, and very full. I am breathing through my heart as I stomp across the fields, hammering, and the angel of death knows my name. That doesn’t mean much; the angel knows your name, too. Now move.

Gone for thirty years.

What good is poetry
if it doesn’t speak to my eyes
or fill the hard, empty socket
in my chest?

What is the point of thinking
if I cannot feel?

I do not miss the toes
that I chopped off
in anger.

I am slicing into the hard crust
of living as a human.

The crust of my life
is a shell
I must break through,
like an angel
breaking through the front line
in a vast and terrible battle.

The days flow away
in the strong current
of time.
What good is poetry
when I am drowning?

The sky is a weight
on the harshness
of living,
and I know this;
to ever see you again,
I, too, will have to die.

And maybe not even then.

In the dream I have decided to build ‘an army of kindness.’

With this army I intend to sweep through the land doing good deeds, feeding the hungry, and building shelters for the homeless. I intend to change the world for the better, and I will not ask permission. I go out into the streets of the dream city where I live, seeking people to join me. I have recruited several people into my army when I come across a very short, very old woman, who is eating peanuts from a jar. “Will you join us?” She shakes her head no, and offers me the jar of peanuts. I eat some peanuts and ask her again, “Are you sure? You can bring along your nuts, you know.” “These aren’t my nuts,” she tells me, “They’re your nuts!” And she throws her head back and laughs and laughs, and for the first time I notice that she has no teeth. “How did you eat the peanuts with no teeth?” But instead of answering me, she just hugs me, with her arms around my waist, laughing into my tummy.

Learning the truth when the lights go out.

How far is there left to go?
And just how do we cover the distance?
The days whisper secrets to each other
When we are not paying attention.
The years ignore us altogether.
This is why the wind bites so hard
In the deepest corner of winter,
Why the night can be so overpowering.
The secrets hold a truth that
You and I cannot know, at least not yet.
Secrets, like a tick, dig in deeper and deeper.
Something dark, down below us,
Keeps these secrets and protects them,
Nurtures and feeds them,
But not forever, just for a while.
We will learn the truth
Just as the lights finally go out.

I am sleeping in a bed made of magic, and I begin to dream.*

In the dream I am trying to put together a crew to rob a bank. I am looking for certain people, very special criminals, as I believe I can do this robbery without weapons or even the threat of violence. “I need people who can work with love,” I keep saying, “I need love criminals.”

Then the dream changes, becoming dark and frightening, and I am unable to speak. I know a rather heavy secret that some people will need to know to stay alive. I want to write out this secret, but there is nothing to write with. Acting out the answer has failed, and now, one by one, these people are dying. In the end I am surrounded by piles of bodies, and I am weeping. Eventually I struggle to my feet and I start trying to find my way out.

Night. The magic bed. Oh, how complex this thing called living is, even in sleep.

*Another one of those I’ve tinkered with for several years. An earlier version was even published. I’m done now.

Adios!
James

Ecstatic produce.

Whispers in the fields of tomatoes,
in the fields of corn. Small voices,
raspy with delight. The corn says
something about using your time
to find joy. The tomatoes laugh
and suggest dancing. The hot wind
lays music across your skin
and you begin to move.
Summer in the Sacramento Valley.

Under oath.

The moon is just
another liar. See!

Old soul.

Old soul still has good legs
and swims in the Yuba River.
Brr! Refreshed in cold water,
snowmelt water, old soul rests
on a warm, white boulder.
Sunshine without time,
and old soul feels at home.

March rain.

A lone coyote stands under a Valley Oak,
watching the downpour. Dark eyes
hide the thoughts we’ll never know.

Hey, listen up.

Stranger,

you’re a corpse bathed in bluebonnets,

and blessed with cerulean hues. You’re blood

is like fire, but you’re a corpse nonetheless.

It’s not just you, it’s the same for all of us,

including bobcats, trees, and wood spiders.

Everything that lives, dies. No exceptions.

Listen, we’re blessed just the same.

The thing is that dying is a blessing, too.

Bathed in gold. Cerulean hues.

That’s all I have for you right now.

Funeral time again.

Dead love rots quickly, faster
than flesh. And there are more
shattered hearts everyday.
The gravedigging never stops.

Until next time, I’ll be hanging out in the shade.

Rains County, Texas

The fields where my grandfather grew cotton now grow weeds and discontent. Today, a few people raise cattle, and fewer still raise horses, and their grown children move away to Dallas or Houston or Little Rock, and they take with them their dreams and their elbow grease. Nobody farms there anymore. What grows without dreams and elbow grease? Weeds and discontent. There’s still rich black dirt, especially in the bottom lands, but no one desires to work it, to make something grow. As a teen my grandfather would look at my hands for dirt, for signs of farming, signs of work. My hands were clean, I worked on poems then, as I still do. As a man I was long gone, way past Dallas to California. And I took my dreams and my elbow grease with me.

Yolo County, California

The music from Miles Davis’ trumpet is loud and strong, and slips free and floats out of my windows caught by a breeze. Wind can scatter the sounds of music, diluting the volume with air. Even so, the jazz carries across these farmlands that I do not farm, blowing along like courage or love. Crops and people grow stronger and freer for that which they can almost hear.

The children who knocked at the door.

‘For I hungered, and you gave me meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in.’ - Matthew 25:35

“Their skin is brown, so turn them away. Their language is Spanish, so turn them away. We saved those dirty pennies in a little bank, and we would have to spend them.”

They arrive tired and hungry, and afraid. They fear the place where they have been, and they fear the place where they have come. Hunger and poverty is what they own.

The land of the free and the home of the brave. The land of opportunity, the American dream. And after enduring suffering and hardship on the road they arrive at the door and they knock.

Then they are cursed and spat on, and locked in cages not fit for animals. There is no American dream for them. “Hold no hope; you are not welcome here.”

“Their skin is brown, so turn them away. Their language is Spanish, so turn them away. We saved those dirty pennies in a little bank, and we would have to spend them.”

America, you can afford a thousand military bases to maintain control of your worldwide empire. America, you can afford bombs and bullets and fighter jets and tanks, and nuclear warheads.

Here, the wealthy stand on the backs of the poor. Here, the wealthy control the government and the police and the courts and the banks. And the wealthy want the door closed.

America, listen, I am not your son anymore. I am ashamed of this family. Ashamed. No, I do not care where anyone was born. They are children, and we should open the door.

“Their skin is brown, so turn them away. Their language is Spanish, so turn them away. We saved those dirty pennies in a little bank, and we would have to spend them.”

Aprende un poco de español, cabrón.

Read more

Solitude and the bat.

The strength of moonlight
dots of stars

Carelessly built houses
blanket the valley floor

A lone bat darts overhead
and is quickly gone

At midnight the path
is bathed in holy light

There is something evil at work in tennis.

The athletes move across the court like two battleships in a small bay firing cannons at each other. There is no escape. Their grunts when they hit the ball are battle cries. It feels as though the loser could die and then sweat forever while running around in hell. I have tried to warn people that tennis is the sport of the devil, to stay away and to keep their souls clean with baseball and basketball. People, this is your one life. Don’t ruin everything with tennis.

Staying busy.

To fly
I must first rise
up into the air

To become dust
I must first be buried
down into the earth

Isn’t life busy?
Always, always
I have so much to do

Writing stank poems.

Fill up the spaces between the words

with color or music. Sculpt

your dreams into stanza and statues.

Know the truth as well as a carpenter

knows hand tools. Build something

with the strength to stand on its own.

Be proud of this.

I hope you enjoyed today’s stack on The Book Of Jobe. To receive new stacks, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Adios,
James

I’m ready now to live where I can see and hear the livestock, but not smell them. Friendly chickens and cattle that wave when I drive past.

I’ll start the calendar anew at Day One of the First Year of the Third Age of Homo Sapiens.

I’m ready now to have us begin a way of life where being kind to each other is the most important thing of all.

Hot dogs in the fridge
and canned beans in the cabinet
(the one with the squeaky door)

Some days life is good
and you’re good enough
to know it

I’m a liar?

Do you have any idea how

boring

the story is?

It’s ok

to think of me

as an itchy old dog

rubbing my back

against a valley oak

for relief — or —

dragging my ass

across your new carpet

in front of company.

Uncomfortable?

That’s not my problem.

I’m an old dog. I itch.

Deal with it.

What’s that?

Why would I even write

a stank poem like this?

That’s not my problem either.

Because I know that gods and angels don’t exist I get to complain to them constantly. Someone has to be held accountable.

A group of flying swans is called a flight or a wedge.

A flight of swans. Nice.

But if they’re not flying they are a bank of swans.

That got my attention.

A pack of coyotes, a murder of crows,

I’ve heard a lot of these.

Now I have begun making up my own.

An opera of dogs.

But are they wet dogs?

A funk of dogs.

A bladder of festival shoes.

A knifing of monkeys.

A nightmare of boogers.

A riot of students.

A dipstick of oil change techs.

An attack of hummingbirds.

A romper room of humans.

Are they older humans?

A waiting room of humans.

A hell of police.

A heaven of cannabis.

What is the measure of a thing?

I went long into the night.

Read more

I’m working on (and off) on this longer piece on my friendship with my late cousin, Eddie. It’s made up of shorter pieces and poems, and here is a group of them. I have no idea what I will do with this, but I’m certain that Eddie would have liked me writing it.

That house up the street where they have so many cats.

A truck in the driveway on blocks, wheels gone.

That plethora of oil stains on the concrete

like the faded jail tattoos on old carnival workers

with names like Lefty or Clem.

The kids there play loudly on the street where few cars ever pass.

Whole summers can pass without a single car; it’s crazy.

The mosquitoes there can speak, but only in Acadian French.

You know the place I mean, don’t you, Eddie?

—

Hey, Eddie — Do you remember

when we talked all night

while long forgotten Jobe

family ghosts listened?

Just two boys in the glow

of an old kerosene lantern.

Cousins in Rains County, Texas.

Things go easier with time, Eddie.

A liar told me that.

Things seem random to me.

Good, bad, whatever.

Wherever you are now,

I remember you.

—

Say, Cuz —

do you ever wonder

how that first rose decided

to open?

—

The grass and the trees have a wholesome smell,

like soil mixed with life.

The sun shows us what the sky allows it to show.

Even the barn and the chickens seem like heaven.

Rains County in the summertime.

Visiting our grandparents for a couple of weeks,

cousins from two different suburban neighborhoods.

Cows and chickens? Barking dogs and police sirens

were far more prominent in our youth.

Eddie and Jimmie, the Jobe cousins.

We studied life and discussed it all.

You can only live one day at a time, we decided.

And how you feel about that makes no difference at all.

Eddie and I don’t speak for everyone,

but by god, we don’t speak in spite of them either.

—

Eddie told me that his plan

was to split the year into 13 months

of exactly 4 weeks each.

“There’ll be a couple of days left over.

They won’t count and we’ll hang out at the lake.

Like now.”

And Eddie leapt to his feet

and jumped off of the boat dock.

Cannonball, indeed.

—

Teens, we crashed the tent revival in Point, Texas.

Looking for girls.

My god, we had gall! What heathens!

You were almost ‘saved’ but I got you out of there.

I told you that the Bible is just old men

trying to explain what they don’t understand.

You know? Shallow thinkers.

—

The heart is right to cry out in need, Eddie.

Grandma Allie read it in my tea leaves.

–

My cousin Eddie didn’t rise up in the sky

and neither did Jesus. Eddie lived a wounded life, a short life,

like a carrot in the garden, partially eaten by a raccoon.

If his life had been a book

the pages would have been filled with confusion.

There was a pond beyond sight behind some woods,

Eddie and I would swim there.

A big turtle watched us and we watched back.

My cousin’s life was cut short

and when it was over he did not rise up into the sky,

and neither did Jesus.

And neither will you or I.

Until we meet again.

Hours pass like minutes, and weeks pass like days.

Every month a new year begins, and every year I am buried and reborn; what good is coffee to me now? What once was home is now mere memory, and that which I now call home is a razor-cut on the dry earth. The wound will never stop bleeding until the body is drained, and drops dead on the hard dirt floor. What use is a clock? A calendar? Let’s do this - you hold me and I will hold you. When the end comes racing around the empty corner we can face it together. At least that’s something.

I dip my toes in the river where no one ever swims.

The water is cold, and I jump in anyway. I pull a strength up into me from a place far below and I walk across the fires of the maddened sky. I will not die. Not yet. The mauls of life pound me down and I stand again anyway. We all own that, but only if we claim it. I turn away from the face of evil and so become free. There is no hell, the devils live inside of us. Cast them out. Let the beasts come and let the earth quiver. Whatever is next, I can face. I do not give a damn for consequence. I do not give a damn if I now fail. I have already done everything that I came here to do.

Talk to us, Master, it is so lonely here on this shelf.

The items for sale are speaking to the grocer as he stocks the shelves one by one. They have questions about the strength of the world. His rough fingers are people, too, and they cast shadows of their own.

It is late at night and the store is closed. The items come to life in the darker hours, and they have little voices, squeaky voices, like those elves in Northern fairy tales. What people do is sometimes the definition of who they are, or of what they might become, but not always.

The grocer has a heart and answers the items as he stocks. There is a world beyond this store, he tells them, and it is huge and beautiful. You’ll see some of it one day, when you are coming closer to your own end.

Daylight is knocking at the door, but I will not open it.

I’m in love with the darkness. The whales of morning bellow and blow, these are just moans from hell. Time is a river that cannot be dammed, but I am a man, and I can be damned. And maybe I am damned; time will tell. These thoughts form a piano, and a naked woman bangs out a song. Night flies through the sky like Superman on a mission. The stars have extraterrestrial eyes, and they whisper, “We will watch over you.” I don’t really give a damn about the whispers. I don’t really give a damn about anything more than sunrise.

Read more

Sacramento, summer, after work.

The traffic is a mad celtic army charging the Romans without a plan or half a chance, and not even caring. Across the big valley the barbeque grills are blazing hot, and the symphony of the sizzling meat is playing loudly. The bats leave their resting place on the underside of the causeway at dusk, moving together like synchronized swimmers. Then, fat and sated, with their lard settling into sofas, the thick people nod off to the light of televisions, numb and without feeling.

I am beating this drum for all of the dead people that I still love.

The music feels better than new Chuck Taylor sneakers. The people are my human sacrifices, and this music is a device to carry my message with them to the other side. On this side, my living people dance while I drum, and the dead just listen, like eavesdroppers. I must keep the beat for the dancing to not stop, for when the dance is over, I must take my place with those others. The lost ones. Then I will be a messenger, too.

A man with a piano sings about god’s love.

This man’s beard is long and pointed, and with my third eye I can see that the angels love him, so I love him, too. His face is handsome, and there is a sort of kindness in voice. From his heart, a long, dark hand reaches out to heaven. That hand touches me as well. Where is the sorrow that brought me here? Where is the faith that failed me? Each note sustains me, the verses return me to the one. Life, you reward me at times when I least expect it. Life is the river, and that which we name god is the boat.

I am lost in the ugliness of humanity again.

The richer humans are eating the flesh of the poorer ones, the weak ones. The rich peel the poor like bananas. They suck the bones clean and then purr like contented cats. Cruel? Yes, and that is no coincidence. Everything cruel is in a digital file so the government can enjoy it on the computers we buy them. All of our names are written down somewhere. Not somewhere nice. This is repugnant to me. The ugliness of humanity is now a map for the hideous. They trace their favorite roads from a map with a pencil that they stole from a blind man. I have no map, and so I am lost most of the time. That’s alright, though; I prefer it that way. I have nowhere special to be.

Adios,
James

Let's all just bleed in the water so that the sharks will have a trail to follow.

We all should consider feeding something other than just ourselves. This must have been said somewhere, in a Constitution, on a road map of Oregon, or in an owners manual. In these waters one can wake up dead, or suddenly left handed. Relax. There really aren't any rules. Just gently slice open the fleshier part of the palm and dangle the hand in the water as the boat sails across the shark filled sea. The salt from the sea water might sting a little, but isn't that a small price to pay for what comes next?

I am a ridiculous man.

The moon is an old friend;

Was it hung there by a child?

The sky is a blanket of night

Waiting in the cool darkness.

My feet are tired from walking,

And my soul is worn out by grief.

How far is there left to go?

And how did the years fall away

So quickly? I seem to have failed

To see that which is obvious.

I am a ridiculous man.

My mind is a ticking time bomb

That cannot be defused.

Sin can be forgiven, but my mistakes?

They cannot all be corrected.

My guilt is obvious, everyone knows it.

I wonder now if I know it, too?

This silence is propaganda.

The wealthy exist in the silence found in the blood of the poor, the blood of people of color. The blood of the blood of the blood. They are welding dollars to the steel frame of silence. Silent poems are melting in the afternoon sun, stepped on by corporate masters. This propaganda is how you live when your heart is choked by this silence, when your soul has been stabbed by the police, when the police state rules with mud, hunger, and hatred. With bullets. Silence is the violent jail cell rape that violates the hard beauty of being human. It is far too late for me to stay silent. You have dreamed of a naked silence that walks unseen through the crowded streets, and I confess, so have I. This silence is the propaganda that is used to control us, to conform us to rules that we never wanted. They are coming for us even now, for what little silence remains. This is the hopelessness of silence, the hopelessness of the final second, the end. The silence of propaganda is now king.

After years of sleeping, your soul is awake.

Your eyes are brown seas that flood the sky at dusk. Naked, your body holds the Seven Hills of Rome, and the children there squeal with delight. Garcia Lorca rose from the dead to see you dance, and then returned to heaven. The snow envies your laughter, and mountains have fallen at the mere chance of you, at the thought of kneeling before your rich heart. There is a starving bear walking toward you now, but don’t worry about it; he has your best interests in mind. Nothing is preordained. I don’t believe in fate or luck, not for a moment. I just believe in you.

-For Alexandra-

28 JULY 2026

Adios,
James

Fear nothing, especially not death.

A shadow eases up slowly

from behind you. As it approaches,

step by step, it comes to rest

having covered up your own shadow.

That can be frightening, especially

when you turn around and see

that no one is there at all. Just a long,

empty sidewalk on a hot July afternoon,

and you are alone with the shadow.

In every world, there are other worlds, hidden worlds,

And in every person are many other people.

Should we question them? No.

We should bathe them in those secret streams

That flow with golden water.

We should sail with them through one of a million skies.

After all, who will stand forth and command today?

And in which world will we choose to spend

The most quiet and delicious dreams of our lives?

It is a smell like in a funeral home,

death and too many flowers,

sickly sweet. Hold your nose

and bow your head. It is the smell

of the tears and the sorrow of the bereaved.

The odor fills our nostrils and lives,

until our lives are overpowered by death.

And that's how it is, you know; in the end.

All of our lives will be overpowered

by death. The casket has been loaded

into the hearse, and matching horses

will take it to the graveyard. One horse

stamps down a hoof as we walk past.

There is a smell, sickly sweet.

We are passing by the dead.

It was an old dog that gave me permission to live.

He led me way out onto the floor

of the high desert. Yucca, dust,

and loneliness. We walked

until our feet were padded and strong,

thick with the lies of tomorrow,

thick with the truth of today.

The sun was hard and resolute,

and straight as a ten-penny nail.

On this journey there was only one place

to stop for water, and by the time we got there

I discovered that I was a dog, too.

And perhaps I always had been that way,

but was just too stupid to know it.

I am often stupid.

I lapped up water as a dog does,

and slept curled up.

When I awoke, it was night,

and a quarter moon was low in the sky.

The old dog who had led me there

was now a man, tall and commanding.

“I give you permission to live,” he said,

and then he walked away in the moonlight.

Read more

Finally, it is quiet.

Sssh.

You can hear the sound

Of your bare feet in the grass.

You can hear your breath

And feel your heartbeat,

But more, you hear

The sound of your own life.

Human.

Your soul makes no sound at all,

But you listen for it anyway.

Your body is alive,

And tells you so.

Sssh.

It is night, and looking up,

You see that the moon and the stars

Are quiet, too, shining silently

On the green branches of the pines.

We are defeated.

From over the ocean the warplanes return

Like dragonflies flying over a fishpond.

The stars above them hum and whisper in diamond light.

The world is a whirlpool of churning thought.

We are defeated, indeed, both sides are defeated.

No one really wins a war.

The graves of the innocent villagers are shallow and hard.

The broken arm of the night will not mend,

And the soldiers know this.

Some of the soldiers sleep in sleek caskets.

We should bury them together, two to a grave.

One American, one Afghani.

They could rest forever in each other’s arms.

This was not the day that I discovered

a cure for the common cold.

I did not compose a symphony.

And the world record for land speed?

Do you know that one? I didn’t

break the record today.

I also didn’t garden

or clean the damn house.

Start the great American novel?

Hardly.

So what did I do? I grilled some chicken

and ate with my wife. Then I took a nap.

I read a few poems, and I wrote one.

Later, I held her hand and sat on the bed

while she told me something.

I don’t remember what she said,

but her hand felt as wonderful as it did

when we were young.

In her face, I could still see

the young girl that she once was.

So lovely.

And I wondered,

how does she now see me?

That’s enough for one day.

These are the eyes of my blind life.

These lumps are the ears

That do the listening for my deaf soul.

They rest without thought on a face

As plain as a plate of mashed potatoes.

I see the ghosts who reach out to me,

And I hear the internal words,

The eternal words.

The sky is a friend that comes from so far

Just to sit with me on the porch.

The earth is a garden where I till and plant.

I am blessed with a good heart and a tall spirit.

I live on the rich soil in the big valley

Where my family grows, and this is a good life.

Who needs money to be rich?

Not me.

Not me.

Read more

Here’s a few. JLJ.

It’s for you.

In the dream the sound of an old Baltimore streetcar from years ago wakes me up. I’m back in my old neighborhood of Irvington. I board the streetcar in my pajamas. It’s crowded with morning passengers heading downtown, and I am all the way to Pratt Street before a seat opens up. I sit, and a phone rings. A very old man man hands me a very old telephone and says, “Your life is calling.” Then, in this world, my alarm rings and I wake for real, still feeling the weight of the telephone in my hand.

I am Jobe, no other.

I never felt the need to find myself. Who I am was never a question to me. I’m not a coincidence. JL and Nena planned me from the start. I could have been born to another name or another hearth, even to the point of scales, fur, or leaves, but no. I am Jobe.

Life offers quite a few changes of scenery, changes of wardrobe. One doesn’t have to end as one began. I choose this life, just as it is. This body, mind, and landscape suit me. Every bump in the road, every sorrow; I can face it just fine.

So don’t pity me no matter what ailments of age befall me. I am Jobe, no other, and the path I have made by walking is here just for me.

The only hill.

I am sitting on the only hill in a very flat town. It is a small hill, and is green with summer. I pretend that the well-trimmed grass is a wild forest for tiny beings, human-like, but not humans. They race through the wild with their faces painted, fast and silent. No one can see them but me, and I choose to not tell anyone but you.

This is the place.

This is the place; fish from the city come here to leap into the ocean, city fish gone wild. It’s their nature. You can see them smiling below the choppy waves. Next year their children will come. So it goes.

This is the place; when my time come I join the queue with the others. With one maniacal leap I am free, swimming through chilly salt water. Now something calls me to go deep Deep DEEP. So it goes.

But I haven’t finished yet. Listen to your heart, to your blood. Don’t be afraid to leap, not ever. Freedom is the will to be free, and this is the place. Right here. So it goes.

I hope you enjoyed today’s stack on the Book Of Jobe. To receive new stacks, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Adios,
James

In this dream I am as I truly am.

In most of my dreams I am far younger,

No wife, no children, and strong as an ox,

As I once was.

Not in this dream.

I am near seventy, have asthma

And arthritic feet that hurt.

I am myself.

I am talking to a girl in a wheel chair,

Who is clearly paraplegic,

Although she never says exactly what is wrong.

She is really rather pretty,

Perhaps forty years younger than I am,

And very upset.

In the dream her name is never said.

She is angry and crying and often quite obscene.

No one will ever want her, she is telling me.

No one will even so much as hold her,

Much less make love to her.

I am trying to console her.

I tell her she can’t possibly know that,

Not as young as she is.

She has years yet to be, to meet someone.

She says a very harsh word

And laughs a derisive sort of laugh.

What about me?

Would I take off her clothes?

Would I make love her just as she is?

Would I kiss her body, lick her, enter her?

I would, I insist, but I am married, so I can’t.

I have a wife who I love

And who is very much alive,

And I am a faithful, honest man.

And what about my age?

A young girl can do so much better.

She curses again and calls me a liar.

It’s the chair, it’s her legs, she tells me,

And nothing more, and she rolls herself away.

I feel terrible and begin to cry,

Weeping and sobbing.

I would hold her... wouldn’t I?

Am I so shallow?

I put my head inside my chest and look at my heart.

In this dream I can do that.

My heart is tiny and looks worn out.

How much longer will it go?

I wake up wheezing with asthma

And my albuterol inhaler isn’t enough to ease it.

I have a breathing treatment from my nebulizer

As I type this out, and a dull sort of headache

Lays on the left side of my head.

Is it Saturday, or the end of days?

Time is so slow, and I am often so blind.

Where is a friend?

Where is a window to open?

This valley answers to no one.

Ah, for just an ounce of sorrow,

So that I could be certain that I can still feel.

I don’t think we really need any kings in the world.

Their hands are heavy, like gold.

Their sweat is poison.

What is a kingdom anyway? It is a birdcage

Left outside to torture the imprisoned bird

With a long look at freedom.

Businessmen, suffocated by greed,

Often want to be king, or to get rich

Serving one. That never turns out well.

They are like priests whose god is money.

And I have grown weary of bowing;

Haven’t you? All of those crowns

Would make lovely paperweights.

Think of it - on a windy day

We could leave the windows open

With our papers right out on the desk.

We’ll let the poor sit on the thrones

And feel the breeze on their faces.

Death is knocking at the door.

Please, let him in.

I wasn’t going to live forever anyway.

Death has always been waiting for me,

Like a poor man waiting at a bus stop.

Today, tomorrow; is there a difference?

I’m not sure what comes next, but whatever it is,

I would rather stroll in upright than cower and wait.

Face the end of it all with a glib remark.

A smirk.

Death is a hot iron, and friend,

This shirt is wrinkled.

Read more

And I like it when The Voice says to lay down all reason.

We are alive because of the animal in our blood,

The beast that walks through the soul.

The fur of this animal is coarse and warm,

The claws and teeth are sharp.

When the animal stalks across our time on this planet,

We feel rich and strong.

The grace of the animal shines out through our gaze.

Our blood pulses and throbs.

The Voice knows what we need. Lay down all reason.

Don’t waste time wondering why.

My two ears balance out the space between them,

And my brain is the universe after a cold Pepsi.

Are we looking for answers again? Lord, I hope not.

A superhighway goes between Hell and Yolo County,

And I am in the slow lane behind several trucks.

My sweat is the river on the map of me.

Jesus said, “Eat this, for this is my body.”

But did he say it, or did someone just say he said it?

To believe it, I need to hear it with my own two ears.

What can you trust,

If not the end of the world?

Tidal waves. Flames.

Nuclear winter. The wrath of god;

That’s something you can get your head around.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Riding straight at you.

Lots of running and screaming;

Yes, especially that. But why?

Isn’t it better to go out with a little class?

Raise your glass and toast the onrushing tsunami.

Jump into that crack in the earth.

Embrace the chaos.

Pull out a lawn chair as the meteor comes down,

And just sit and relax, enjoying the view.

I love a good show.

Did you have a hard day, my friend?

Take heart. It’s almost over.

You were a beautiful animal,

And you had been running across an overgrown field.

Your muscles turned like a ceiling fan while you ran,

And this patted down the sound of being alive.

I told you that today was Ho Chi Minh’s birthday,

And I served you coffee, Vietnamese style;

It slowly dripped onto the condensed cream.

Coffee is a friend with a golden soul and a hand to hold.

It was a beautiful day in May, cool, and the air was clean.

As we sipped the coffee I watched your long paws;

One of them was scratching at the ground.

If I concentrate now I can still hear that scratching sound.

Then you ran again, finally disappearing from sight

When you cleared a rise at the far side of the field.

Adios,
James

A noisy crow reigns
atop the old wooden fence —
A warm summer day

Humans all walk their own path

although it’s really the same path.

I’m not here to complain.

In the long Sacramento Valley I trust

the summer air and the winter rain.

My path has geese flying overhead,

step by step I move through my days.

Driving across farmland perfectly flat,

looking at the crops, this time of year

the corn and sunflowers will soon be in.

There are fields of both to the north

and the east of my old house. It’s true

that I am not rich, but the soil is.

And on this soil rests the foundation

of my house. Rich, flat farmland

is where my family was planted.

Here is where we grew tall.

Forrowed, the long row cut by the blade of the plough, measured by the weight of the dark soil. Blessed; rain, sun, fauna, and flora all come into my life. The human version of a barn owl’s life, fat on mice and resting in perfumed pines. The years have me now in their enduring grasp. My peace comes in creation, building poems the way a carpenter builds a porch. I sleep deeply in poetry with rich dreams and contented snores.

Everything in the public section above is brand new, from the last three days. In the private section below are recent rewrites.

Read more