As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.
Federico Garcia Lorca
(Murdered by Franco’s fascists in Spain, 1936.)
The mirrors are still at last, and you are so tired. You are listening to the wheezing breaths of the smokers. Even your mind is tired, and you don't really want to think anymore, but you don't know how to stop. From a dark corner of your consciousness you sense that the animals are slowly returning to the forest, and you wish that you could join them. You will die one day and until then you will never be free of this reality. Yes, there are cracks in time, you've seen them, but they are too small to slip through and escape. Your life is a slender being, moving from shadow to shadow, slinking in memory and loneliness. The room smells of disinfectant and the nurse with the cart is bringing the medication. You check the mirror one more time and then look up at the plain-faced clock and see that three minutes have passed since the last time you looked.
jobe
To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
Walt Whitman
Here at the End of Days
Jesus has returned
And this time he plays hockey
For the Toronto Maple Leafs
Mary Magdalene sells make-up
On late night television infomercials
And Judas Iscariot is a conservative
Supreme Court Justice
This morning I walked outside
And found that I was inside again
Walking back in
I found myself in the front yard
Looking to the sky
I could see the moon was still up
Watching the end of days
jobe
You cannot simply stay at home and say, “I am already where I want to be.” It is only the journey that makes you realize your true potential, and only at the end of the journey will you understand that the goal is not to separate from the starting point.
Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche
Seeds
We are but seeds and our lives are the earth, the soil.
Tell me, what shall we grow in this garden?
jobe
Mourning Yin Yao
Returning you to Stone-Tower Mountain, we bid farewell among ash-green pine and cypress, then return home.
Of your bones now buried white cloud, this much remains forever: streams cascading empty toward human realms.
Wang Wei, 701-762 CE
I wipe the stink from the blade. I carry the cup from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, but I do not drink the blood. Not ever. I do not love the city for its lights or wealth. I remember well when the streets were on fire with the anger of the poor. Was there ever a time when this land was not at war? I do not listen to the priests anymore; I stopped when I was very young. I pray, yes, but not to the false god of damnation. I pray to the universe of the light and the creation. I pray that I will earn the kindness that was shown to me, and that I will, in turn, be kind myself. Turn and turn again. I remember my childhood as if it was a foreign country that I visited long ago. Where will I end up if I continue to walk this same road? I don't know, but I intend to find out.
jobe
silence is now our father.
what has become of our voices?
when did the crows come and rip out our throats?
silence is now our father.
this land is filled with great ghettos, in city after city.
and we say nothing.
silence is now our father.
children are going hungry in the shadows of billionaires.
children. do you hear me? hungry.
and we say nothing.
silence is now our father.
there is not even a gurgling sound in our throats.
our taxes pay for the bombs that blow apart hungry children in other lands.
children. do you hear me? blown apart.
the fat pig of government pours liquid gold into the belly of the military,
enough gold to feed all of the world.
where is it spent? on bullets and jet fuel.
on rifles and bombs.
and we say nothing.
silence is now our father.
do we build schools?
no. we build prisons.
do we pass laws to help people be free?
no. we pass laws to take their freedom away.
and we say nothing.
for silence is indeed our father.
we are pumping life from the earth itself
and pouring poison into the empty hole.
we are melting the ice caps
and allowing those who do it to call it god's will.
and we say nothing.
and silence is indeed our father.
no more.
friend, it is time to find our voices once again,
it is time to speak.
the emperor has no clothes.
the people we were told are our enemies
are not our enemies,
and it is time for us to stop being theirs.
i say it is time to scream. to rage.
are you listening? leave your house.
stop getting stoned on your television.
it is time now for us all to walk outside
and scream in the street as one.
we'll just stop traffic and scream.
we'll stop working and scream.
we'll scream for the hungry children.
we'll scream for the people who sleep under the freeway.
we'll scream for the women turned away from the clinic.
we'll scream for the prisoners with no hope.
we'll scream for the iraqi villagers crying at the graveside.
we'll scream for the children who walk north in terror.
we'll scream for the family that just can't make it until payday.
we'll scream for the wounds of the earth, for the trash in the sea.
we'll scream for the filth in the air.
we'll scream for the leaders getting rich on death and war.
we'll scream for the lifetime of lies we have endured.
we'll scream for the numbness in our minds.
we'll scream for the freedom of our souls.
we'll scream and we will not stop screaming.
we'll scream because we are human beings, souls inside of bodies.
we will all rise at last and go outside and we will scream.
silence is not our father.
silence is not our father.
silence is not our father.
-for larry jaffe & priyesha lobinha nair-
jobe
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