Death is that moment the river of your blood flooded and rose so high that it covered your name. Your name washed away in a river of blood. How about that?
Life is that moment when you choose to toss away your name without replacing it, and just go on, nameless. That’s a good one, too.
Friend, when the flood recedes, when the moment passes, try just to breathe. Try just to be present in the moment. Your life is your own.
And any moment could easily be your last.
James Lee Jobe
Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
When the universe speaks, it might be in the voice of a hungry child, or the whimper of a frightened animal.
James Lee Jobe
Grodek
At evening the woods of autumn are full of the sound
Of the weapons of death, golden fields
And blue lakes, over which the darkening sun
Rolls down; night gathers in
Dying recruits, the animal cries
Of their burst mouths.
Yet a red cloud, in which a furious god,
The spilled blood itself, has its home, silently
Gathers, a moonlike coolness in the willow bottoms;
All the roads spread out into the black mold.
Under the gold branches of the night and stars
The sister’s shadow falters through the diminishing grove,
To greet the ghosts of the heroes, bleeding heads;
And from the reeds the sound of the dark flutes of autumn rises.
O prouder grief! you bronze altars,
The hot flame of the spirit is fed today by a more monstrous pain,
The unborn grandchildren.
Georg Trakl 1887-1914, Austria
Miles Davis & Ron Carter
Is a god above?
Does it matter? Fresh blossoms
on my crape myrtle.
James Lee Jobe
When we develop self-control and tolerance toward our difficult feelings and impulses, instead of behaving thoughtlessly or reactively, we can choose not to act at all.
Kimberly Brown
The leaves are a blanket that cover the ground,
keeping it warm on the colder days.
A light rain has started, it feels good on my skin.
There is a wind making the trees sing that branch song
and I am out here uinder an endless sky.
James Lee Jobe
"Facing It" a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa
Yusef Komunyakaa is one of my favorite poets. A Pulitzer Prize For Poetry winner, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner, a Vietnam vet where he won a Bronze Star, and a teacher at Indiana University, Princeton University, and New York University, his many books of poems are filled with jazz rhythms and colloquial English that captures me both aloud and on the page.
