Well after midnight. The smell of a skunk somewhere in the distance, borne by the slight wind. From the park across the street I hear the familiar sound of the owl that lives there. Isn’t it sweet? The wild can come to us anywhere, even in my city. Two nights past the full moon.
When the earth herself comes asking for help, how will we hear her? Friend, we fail
to even hear each other.
Now you are walking and the day is hot. The earth rises up to meet your feet. Time and distance pass this way. Now there is a forest and you hear music coming from beyond the trees, a drumbeat, fast and steady. Are the animals dancing? Now more drums join in from other parts of the forest, some sound very close. Are the trees themselves dancing? The beat is intoxicating and a breeze cools your face. Now you are lifting your feet and beginning to dance.
I am not anyone in particular. Just a piece of the universe, the same as anything else. The same as everything else. I am the black of the night sky. Yes. And I am also the light from the distant stars. Same as you.
prose poems by jobe
The Orphanage, a poem by Darius Atefat-Peckham
Breaking My Facebook/X Addiction.
Hi, Campers.
I started blogging in 2008. Every two or three years I would move the blog, trying out different blogging sites. Some were better than others. Some were awful. Between then and now the daily ‘hits’ on my blogs grew to a point where I was not concerned with submitting poems anymore. Why bother? If several hundred people daily read what I post, hell, that’s enough. I promoted the blogs through social media, which meant being on those social media sites daily, and so the addiction began.
The poet William Stafford wrote a poem every single day. When asked what he did if a poem “wasn’t so good” on any particular day, Stafford answered that he lowered his standards. I love that. In 2010, I also began writing a poem everyday. I was always prolific, but at that point the poems began to pile up.
I caught COVID early on. No vaccine, no medicine. My temperature was so high that at times I was delirious. A week passed without me even being aware of it. I was still sick after that week, but I was slowly recovering. And I had broken the chain of writing everyday. Still, in that decade I wrote nearly 4000 poems. And I had many more, uncounted, from the decades before that practice began.
The combination of writing, blogging, and then promoting on social media led me to a sort of addiction to Facebook and Twitter/X. I was on there all the time. It was eating up my time. I felt closer to people in other parts of the world than I did to my neighbors.
A few months ago I decided to shake it off. Musk had X and ruined it, Zuckerburg was nearly as bad. I was on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Spoutible….. and Bluesky. My blog (at that time) was on Blogspot, which is Google. So, how should I do this?
I had been following Ricki Lee Jones and Patti Smith on Substack because I am a fan. I decided to move my writing there and promote it only on Bluesky. It felt sort-of independent. And I did it Cold Turkey.
My writing is almost back up to pre-COVID levels. I can have a conversation without tweeting about it. I no longer photograph my meals. (Looking back, that’s kind of weird, man.) I am reading a lot more. I am happier.
So I started this piece with my morning coffee, which is now kicking in. I think I’ll go to the park.
Thanks for reading the book of jobe today. Happy New Year.
jobe
Ha! At first I thought that you had made Sproutible up, then I checked and discovered that it is for real . I resisted the temptation to open an account, like you say - its too easy to let these things take over.