To translate life into language.
Buddha's friends called him Bud.
AUTUMN has arrived like a passenger who got on the wrong train. He fumbles with his baggage as he stumbles into the station, tired and lost. Even the geese passing overhead slow down for a moment and feel some pity for him as they hurry south. The compassion of geese. By the station door, some stubborn leaves blow around in a circle, there's no reasoning with them. None of this has happened, of course; this is just the kind of autumn it is. After writing this I will put my pencil down, exit the station, and take a walk through the fallen leaves like a child.
-jobe
TO be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
-Howard Zinn
POET, why are you even here? To translate life into language. To capture moments like a child captures lightning bugs in a jar.
-jobe
YOU ask how I spend my time:
I nestle against a tree trunk,
listening to the autumn winds
in the pines all day and all night.
Shantung wine can't get me drunk.
The local poets bore me.
My thoughts head south with you,
like the river, endlessly flowing.
-Li Po, 701-762 CE
LI PO lived during the Tang Dynasty. His name was pronounced as Li Bo for a long time, but is now pronounced as Li Bai. Sort of like the way Mao Tse-tung is now Mao Zedong. Westerners pronounce a lot of Chinese words incorrectly, and you know, slowly that is getting cleaned up. My wife is Chinese-American, and her parents were from Beijing (formerly Peking). My Mom-in-law told me many times that my own use of Chinese had an odd Texas accent to it.
I first read Kenneth Rexroth’s translations of Chinese poetry as a young man in the stacks at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, while playing hooky from school. Later, it was Gary Snyder’s Han Shan translations, and later still Sam Hamill and David Hinton. As a retired man I began practicing Soto Zen and I re-read it all, everything I could get my hands on, and added Japanese poetry as well. Many of these poets were Buddhist. Some books I bought, some I borrowed from the Davis, California library. Li Po and Wang Wei are favorites of mine, and you will see Chinese and Japanese poets here at times, including some modern ones. For the ones still living, I am more likely to post links to poems so as not to violate copyrights.
-jobe
CHANGING sky, beautiful rain.
Bless this dry earth, our trees, our crops.
-jobe
the cherry end of your cigarette against the pale sky, a poem by Levi Romero
Milton’s God, a poem by Nate Klug
THE fragrance of sandalwood and rose bay does not travel far, but the fragrance of virtue rises to the heavens.
-Buddha (Friends call him Bud)
AUTUMN, the trees are a fire
of red and orange. we'll make
it through the season just fine,
one breath at a time.
-jobe
…YOU’VE wasted so much of your life
Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you
Do that again? I would, a thousand times.
-Robert Bly, from Ravens Hiding In A Shoe
NO man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
-Heraclitus
YOUR life is unique
follow your own path
and leave the naysayers behind
your life
your choices
your karma
-jobe
Sheba Temple, Japan, 1865
IN the dream I was a janitor, buffing the floor. Working steadily, I swung the buffer back and forth in a long hallway. Each pass was as grand as the Tower of Babel. I didn't want to be famous or rich or even the boss, just to see the floor shine like a gem satisfied me. I know who I am, my friend, even in my dreams. Work is work, to be honest, to do my best - that's enough. Waking up, I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror and I saw an old man, nothing more, but nothing less. Indeed. The earth had spun around one more time, as it does. A new day. Isn’t that enough?
Feel free to subscribe, y’all.
-jobe