Sleeping in the dusty corners.
5.13.2025
"We take refuge in pride because we
are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves."
Kakuzo Okakura, Book of Tea
We have but a brief time without soldiers. Let us use this time to celebrate the rain and the soil. Let us give praise to the sun and to the air.Now, before the earth turns again, and we are lost in the chaos of living as humans. We are human. Spirit made flesh. These are our bodies. This is our world. So now, before the soldiers return and we hear the bolts sliding back on the rifles, Celebrate and give praise. Quickly.
jobe
No person is your friend who demands your silence,
or denies your right to grow.
Alice Walker
Silence isn't empty. It's crammed full of stuff; answers, truth, peace. All kinds of good stuff. So, you know, shut up once in a while.
jobe
Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too:
bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it,
then you've no longer been bested by these events.
Louise Glück
The gaudy lights on the Christmas tree are lit.
My granddaughter, just over 15 months old, points at it
And says, "This." Her embrace is heavenly, golden.
The family is all here, settling in for Christmas Eve.
Earlier today, shopping, I saw a homeless man
With a dog and a sign saying that he was a vet,
Please help. I slipped him a little cash, and wished
It could have been more. He looked about my age,
Sixties. It could have easily been me, if the dice
Had rolled just a little differently. He doesn't get
An embrace, I was thinking. Maybe not ever.
Still, the dog seems to love him, and stays close.
Rain clouds were quickly rolling up. Walking away,
I wondered where he would go to stay dry.
I am not much, I know that, but I am loved.
My home is plain and simple, but it is a home.
And my granddaughter is there for Christmas,
And my wife, and my grown children.
And a son-in-law, certainly he's a son now, too.
A Christmas tree is waiting, strung with cheap lights
And ornaments saved up from across a lifetime.
"This." Yes, little sweetheart. This. Merry Christmas.
jobe
You’re right; it’s a long time until Christmas. I care more about poems than I do about holidays. Most holidays are nonsense anyway. I stumbled across this poem from a decade ago in my on-going editing process and I love my grandkid. So there.
To be ethical is always the most intelligent choice.
Sadly, most humans are not very smart.
Brad Warner
Raindrops like teeth, the enamel of god.
A horse of lightning. A tractor of thunder.
The muddied boots of the children,
Waiting forlornly by the front door. A wet winter,
Here to move water back to the earth, and back to the ocean.
You can cry or laugh or find a drum to pound.
You can catch a bus to Dayton or Tulsa.
This isn't fate. This isn't preordained.
If I were foolish enough to make predictions or claims
I would tell you of dark-haired, dark-eyed girls dancing to gypsy music.
I would say that the government is lying about the shape of the world,
Lying about the dreams that wake you with a shudder,
Lying about everything. I am living now in the silence of things,
Sleeping in the dusty corners.
Accept the finality of the human experience.
Raindrops like teeth, the enamel of a god; I am a being of light,
And I refuse to answer to anyone.
jobe
Time eats us alive.
On my birthday yesterday
I was only one day older
though I began ten million eons ago
as a single cell in the old mud homestead.
Jim Harrison, 1937-2016
When I die I hope it’s during the day. I don’t believe there is anything after this life, just nonexistence. That’s why I would like the light to be the last thing I see. And maybe someone there to smile at me.
jobe
Wear you heart on your skin in this life.
Sylvia Plath
The sky knows that it is Spring, hears the call, and answers in appropriate tones of blue. The clouds are absent from role call, and so is the wind. All is still. Below, on the face of The Big Valley, green dominates all like a benevolent ruler, a kind queen perhaps, gracious. One can hear birds singing their joy from the foliage and canopy, expressing their happiness for anyone with hearing to enjoy. Squirrels play, even dogs seem to be in good spirits today. It is now eight years since my son died, and I still carry that weight.
jobe
The earth is not dying, it is being killed.
And the people killing it have names and addresses.
Utah Phillips
Put your soul into your pocket and start walking.
The dark one is a spirit that lives both in this world
and the next, and has questions for you. I say for you,
but the questions are for me, too, for everyone.
Does what you own hold you down?
are you a prisoner of your possessions,
owned by that which you think is owned by you?
Mad people rule here. The dark one says
to put your soul into your pocket and start walking.
Where to, dark one? It doesn't matter.
Your feet know what your head doesn't.
Just leave it all behind and move out.
You see, the dark one also has advice.
Mad people rule here. They confuse money with wealth.
And in the end, friend, you own nothing,
The only thing you can take with you is your soul.
Put your soul into your pocket and start walking.
jobe