there is electricity in the air tonight father

6.9.2025

"The weight of the world is love."

Allen Ginsberg

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash

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there is no correct order to the sequence of that which is

there is also no incorrect order

I am holding the darkness to my temple like a gun

there is no trigger there are no bullets

I am counting the seconds father

when we meet again how will we be

I don't remember anymore

which things happened first

and which things happened last

I don't remember a time

when you approved of me

for that matter I don't remember a time

when I approved of you either

I am holding the darkness to my heart like a knife

now I am pushing it in

there is electricity in the air tonight father

I can taste it can you

jobe

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WHY I AM HAPPY

Now has come an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

And I know where it is.

William Stafford, 1914-1993

William Stafford at the Los Prietos, California Civilian Public Service camp. During World War 2 Stafford was a conscientist objector and spent 2 years in work camps. Stafford did not believe in violence of any kind.

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You want to write some goodness.

You open the notebook and you write down a river.

It looks pretty good there on the page,

So you also write down a mountain.

After that, life picks up,

And so you write a lovely valley,

And a small town where the creek feeds the river.

Snowmelt from the mountain swells the creek.

You write people with lives that fit this landscape.

They grow crops that are fed by water from the river.

They sell supplies to the farmers from a store,

And that store is built of wood from valley oaks.

Now you need a green grocer

To sell the produce that is grown,

So you write one, a friendly fellow.

The people have children and you write a school.

They need faith, so you write a church,

And you write some goodness into their souls.

Then you close the notebook,

For their lives are their own. You're done.

What happens next is up to them.

jobe

“Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought
to be this and that, ain't this and that at all?”

Jack Kerouac

Did you ever think that maybe Lazarus wasn't really dead?

The relationship between the wolf and the lamb

Is a one-way love affair.

Eugene McCarthy never really had a chance in 1968.

The testimonies of plain people are often ignored by the juries;

Did you really wear that jacket to court?

The soul falls in love, the body lusts,

And the old hound chews a bone on the sawdust floor.

The lamb would really be better off without the wolf.

Maybe Lazarus wasn't dead at all.

Jesus waited two days before He even began the walk to Bethany.

He must have known something.

jobe

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LINK: Poet & translator David Hinton's webpage.

Just to read his 'samples' is awesome.

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I have come to feel that I should live in the country, far from most people. Perhaps up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains where the forest is deep.

I don't exactly know why I came to feel this way now, now that I am an old man, but I know this; I am tired of asphalt and concrete, cars and trucks. I am tired of traffic lights and going fast.

I want a forest of pine trees, green all year, and the sounds of coyotes and owls.

Of course, this will never happen. My wife is settled here, and really, I am, too. And we have health issues, both of us.

But oh, to step out of my door and have the woods right there in front of me, just waiting for my footsteps in the fallen pine needles, to have the moonlight filtering down through a canopy of green branches.

jobe

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“What, what am I to do with all of this life?”

Gwendolyn Brooks

the crows have come today

to count and measure the wounds of the earth

these wounds are large and numerous

and the crows announce them one by one

I am their witness

jobe

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Leaving the City

It's frost-bitter cold, and late, and falling
frost traces my gaze all bottomless skies.

Smoke trails out over distant salt mines.
Snow-covered peaks slant shadows east.

Armies haunt my homeland still, and war
drums throb in this far-off place. A guest

overnight here in this river city, I return
again to shrieking crows, my old friends.

Tu Fu, 712-770

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lazy man — I never put my hoses away

they lay wherever I drop them

I never bother to remember where either

I have spent my life walking around

looking for the far end of hoses

I imagine finches watching me or raccoons

all of them thinking me a fool—

stupid man! he should put the hoses away!

well, to hell with them all

I don’t have feathers or fur

and I don’t go around judging people

with poems on their minds

jobe

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Patti Smith’s Substack. (Yes, that Patti Smith)

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I wish they would only take me as I am.

Vincent Van Gogh

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Ah. This is the end of Part One. Part Two is just below. If you would, perhaps consider coming a paid subscriber. That’s what opens the door. And yes, I will certainly consider upgrading you anyway if difficult times are upon you. Send me a message about it. Fear no evil.

jobe