I'm hangin' on, man.
stars, hidden by the rain clouds
Under the stars, the face of night whose voice is fading.*
Dreams and trees, milk and honey. The scythe slicing through silk, through wheat, and through all unreasonable expectations. Silver and gold, filtered with rubies and the wetness of love, filtered with diamonds, and with the smells and flavors of sex. Togetherness. These are the ways that the humans find themselves, the ways that they find each other, for night is here, night and silence. Now they might hold one another until day returns, if only they can find the courage.
*The title of this poem is a line from Georg Trakl’s poem ‘Mourning,’ translated by James Wright and Robert Bly.
Eternal and lovely, a light rain falls on the dry fields.
The stars, hidden by the rain clouds, shine nonetheless. I feel the need to look up. What is that power that speaks to me? At the tail end of night, this rain came. Staying inside of my old house feels like living in a cave. The wind knocks on the door the way a policeman knocks. I had a desire to be outside. Smoke rises from almost every chimney, and there are no dogs on the street. The sound of rain on pavement. Life is timeless. I have no beginning and no end. Life is eternal. Lovely and eternal.
Brief journal update, 09 SEPT 2016.
Not the best of nights; a lot of getting up to pee, odd dreams, and moving about to try sleeping in different rooms (which never actually helps anything).
In one dream my toes became bulbous, like the nose of a bleary old drunk, and in that dream I had a vision of them becoming puss-filled and infected, and eventually amputated. That was weird.
In the rest of the dreams I kept looking down to see if my toes were alright. In fact, I checked them again just now, after writing that sentence.
Also I dreamed of these young single mothers, dozens of them, who all had to save their babies from rising floodwaters in old rotten frame houses in places like Mississippi and Alabama. That one became like a reality show on TV; there was an announcer. In that dream I was just a spectator, I did nothing but pray for the babies. No one drowned.
In yet another dream these older women kept wanting me to hold them. Not in a sexual way, but as they grieved. I was quite young in the dream, and I stopped what I was doing and held them all for as long as they wished.
Around 2 am I read for a while, an old book that rated youth hostels around Japan; I hadn’t seen it in the house before, but Avelino, our middle kid, went over there a few years ago. Must be his. As I read, Thelonious Monk was playing on the radio.
Hand to hand, we walked.
When Johndad Wheeliss died in his 80s, he climbed the rope up to Whatever Is Next with his big hands, worn hard by decades of farm work. An old cotton farmer, he was very kind to me, a city boy. He knew I didn’t understand cows, chickens, or what went on at a cotton gin. He would take me by my small, soft hand and lead me around, explaining things to me. Rains County, East Texas. 1961. If I drew the old man a picture, he would cry and hang it on his wall, and show it to everyone who came in the old frame house. We all called him Johndad, not Grandad, because he was Grandma Allie’s third husband. My real grandfather died quite young, when my father was still in school. Poor Grandma, a house full of kids to raise, crops to get in, animals to tend. The second husband was evidently bad, and no one would tell me exactly what happened, but my Dad and Uncle Earl ran him off at gunpoint. Johndad had been my grandfather’s friend, he and Grandma married in late middle-age, and they had more than twenty good years together. They are buried side by side in Point, Texas. Grandad Jobe is one row of graves over, straight across from them. Friendly placement, it seems to me now. I told Johndad what I never told my Dad, that I wrote poems, and I showed him some that I had written in a notebook. I was fifteen then, 1971. He seemed to like them, and he suggested that I stay in school and away from cotton. l wept when he passed away while I lived all the way across the country. Johndad climbed the rope up to heaven with his big hands, worn hard by so much work. I don’t believe that we will meet again someday, but if we do, I will take the old man’s hand once again.
Wyatt Earp. Los Angeles, California. 1929.
Now I am lighting the fire.
It is a hot day, but I don’t need water; I need fire. This thirst can only be quenched with flame and ash.
And what of my grief? I will burn it down. I don’t expect the worst, I am the worst.
Friend, I’m not saying this to impress you. I just want you to step back when I strike the match.
by James Lee Jobe
04 June 2026
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