the poetry zendo: January 2023

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

The only visitor is death. No one else.

On the eighty-first night after my son died
he came to me in a dream.
He seemed happy and jovial, as he usually was,
but after a bit I began to notice something odd.
Things were protruding from his shoulders,
his neck, and his back.
Wires. Tree branches.
Vines. All tangled, wild.
I tried to remove them,
but I just couldn't seem to get them all.
My son laughed it off, as he always had in life,
and eventually we parted.
I woke up then, it was two in the morning.
What have I done?
Oh my god, where did I go wrong?

Dust on the books, dust on the tabletops. Silence. Sunlight from the window lays in stripes across the dirty floor. One day is the same as the next. Nothing has changed for many years. The only visitor is death. No one else. Past midnight he calls on me, like a ghost with nowhere else to go. At dawn he will slowly stand and leave. Will I go with him? No, not today, but try me tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

"Friend,
what can I count on?"

"The brightly lit moon to define your sadness --
and your fingers, of course."

Just that, and moonlight through the open window.
Nothing else.

That I might let go my judgments, how easily they come. That I might learn to respond with kindness and forgiveness - to people, to life, and to myself.

james lee jobe

In meditation, feel that lovingkindness and compassion—connect with it, soak it up, and let it cover your whole body. You can indulge in it because there’s nothing bad about it.

Bhante Sanathavihari

When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

Bodhidharma

My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.

Cary Grant

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

Jack Kerouac

McCoy Tyner, Giant Steps
(A Coltrane composition, done here on piano.)

Link: an armistice between my dead folks and my delusions, a poem by Ra Malika Imhotep

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-jlj

Monday, January 30, 2023

eggs, bees and the big spoon

god is an empty carton of eggs

or would be if there was a god

and I had eaten all of the eggs

A hummingbird, bright green, quite lovely,
appears out of nowhere, hovering,
watching me water the garden. A simple act
that occupies us both. I wonder
if he is as entertained as I am?
a fine morning, this one,
a fine life here in the Sacramento Valley.

The secrets of living welcome us like bees, like honey. Will tomorrow come? And if it does, will it come for us?

As a boy, my mother would paddle me with a metal serving ladle. It hurt like hell and I called it The Big Spoon. If I was on the edge of being in trouble, and I often was, my mother would scream, “Jimmy! I’m going to get The Big Spoon.” Her booming voice carried across the rowhouses of Baltimore. It was a voice from Hell. Sixty years on, I wonder what the neighbors thought.

james lee jobe

At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

Hakuin

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.

Howard Zinn

Nothing is merely a means to an end, nothing is merely a step on the path to somewhere else. Every moment, everything, is absolutely foundational in its own right.

Barry Magid

My witness is the empty sky.

Jack Kerouac

Charlie Parker, A Night In Tunisia

In Kyoto,

hearing the cuckoo,

I long for Kyoto.

Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694 CE

Link: The Poetry Podcast With Really Nasty Language

-jlj

Sunday, January 29, 2023

pulling a fire behind yourself

There was no one else on the road to honk and scream at so I honked at the moon and screamed at the stars . 4 AM in Yolo County, California. The Wolf Moon of January.

Look up, I am bathing in the clouds. High above this long, green valley, high above the river. The air is cool, and I am clean. I have wanted to be clean for so long now. My body is below, lying still and dirty on the ground. I can hear my wife crying, but I am rising up past the clouds now. Free. Clean at long last.

America doesn't need a wall. It needs a giant mirror, to look at itself.

You are naked, wounded, covered with dirt, and you are pulling a fire behind yourself as you stagger across the troubled face of this world, dragging it with a long rope. These are the days of hunger and exhaustion. Now the sky has opened its mouth and roared like a lion, like an old man. Like an old woman. Now the river is a sin of tears. You own your life, and nothing else. One step follows another, and the fire burns on. The earth again turns away from the sun, and darkness slams shut the door of light and being. You walk alone through the shallow night. Will morning come? Yes, of course. But when?

Money? No. Contentment is wealth.

james lee jobe

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Jack London

A person who is not loving has not experienced love. It is not his fault. Realizing this gives rise to forgiveness. We vow that suffering will stop with us.

Guo Jun

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

George Carlin

Link: Pound and Brodsky in Venice, a poem Megan Fernandes

Link: From the Stone Age, a poem by Alice Corbin Henderson

-jlj

Friday, January 27, 2023

a thousand pianos in the valley

Seiho Takeuchi, 1864-1942 CE

At the end of the service our congregation joins hands to bring a prayer into the world. Hand takes hand takes hand until we are like a lovely snake winding through the sanctuary. No one is left out, no one is omitted. The reaching out continues until all are joined by flesh, and then we all are joined in spirit by our prayer.

Moonrise, and we swiftly climb up through the trees of light. Human beings on the move. Below us, the earth sings primitive verses in a low, rolling voice. The sun is just a golden memory now. Up through the trees we climb, like beasts. Love itself is illuminated. The moonlight shines on our animal faces.

A forest of guitars, growing from the soil like trees. An ocean of drums, all rolling, rolling. In the mountains, saxophones and trumpets blow deep, rich notes, improvising in the snow. And the valley below holds a thousand pianos, a thousand xylophones, and one stand-up bass. The world is ready, friend, count off the beat. Life is an improvisation, let's begin.

james lee jobe

Ay-O, 1931-present CE

If you are careless about the little things you will accomplish nothing. Everybody -- WAKE UP!

Zen Master Hakuin

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Oscar Wilde

If you have mindfulness enabling you to read yourself and understand yourself, craving will have a hard time forming. In whatever guises it arises, you can read it, know it, extinguish it, let it go.

Upasika Kee Nanayon

Keb' Mo' - That's Not Love

Dawn Landscape

The last watch has sounded in K'uei-chou.

Color spreading above Solar-Terrace Mountain,

a cold sun clears high peaks. Clouds linger,

blotting out canyons below tangled ridges,

and deep Yangtze banks keep sails hidden.

Beneath clear skies: clatter of falling leaves.

And these deer at my bramble gate: so close

here, we touch our own kind in each other.

Tu Fu, 712-770 CE

-jlj

the taste of your river

A snow-melt stream high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Clean, pure. To put my face in that water feels so fine. Is my heart still clean? Still pure? I listen to it beat and it sounds to me like coyotes that are far away, running.

james lee jobe

May some kindness come our way today, be it giving, receiving, or both.

james lee jobe

Wandering Where Li the Mountain Recluse Lives,

I Write This on His Wall.

Everything dream here in this human life,

he's easily wild, maybe singing some song.

Asked how old, he says Ancient as pines,

How about land? Bamboo forests aplenty.

Buying herbs from long-gone Han K'ang,

opening gate awaiting Master Shang's visit,

he's done with sitting mats and cushions:

what can you do about white cloud anyway?

Wang Wei, 701-761 CE

Too much month left at the end of the money. Who cares? The bills are paid and the larder is stocked with food. My dog is sleeping the day away in a sunny spot on the floor. What are worries?

james lee jobe

You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To, Art Pepper

Let the old resentments go. Everyone is a teacher, everything is a clue.

james lee jobe

If dreams had a flavor, it would be the taste of your river, the flavor of your trees.

James Lee Jobe

-jlj

Thursday, January 26, 2023

what we hid from the world

Remedios Varo, 1908-1963 CE

Things we hid.

Those things that we hid from the rest of the world, the shame of it. And those other things, the ones we felt we should have been proud of, even though we weren’t, that we showed to anyone who would look. Things neither beautiful nor repulsive. The things that were soft enough to eat with a spoon, but we used a knife and fork anyway. No one was watching, of course. The things that the paramedics used to stop the bleeding, or the things we used to make a tail for our kite. I’m not sure which anymore, it has been a long time. The kite is gone but no one bled to death. The things we say to ourselves when the night is frightening and empty. Say them quickly. Say them now.

james lee jobe

Sonny Boy Williamson - Bring It On Home

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dōgen Zenji, 1200-1253 CE

When your child dies, people keep asking how you are.

Of course they ask; they care.

It’s just hard to explain – my son died

and I have been exiled into myself.

The sentence cannot be appealed.

There is no escape or early parole.

This is the gulag of Jobe, Jobe state prison.

There are ice storms that freeze the earth,

even in summer,

and raging heat waves that scorch the earth,

even in winter.

I break rocks with a pick-ax.

I hoe weeds in the prison farm.

I count the days until my sentence is done,

marking the calendar with an 'x,'

day by day.

james lee jobe

The first step in compassion is to notice the other’s need. It all begins with the simple act of attention.

Daniel Goleman

What's that, America?

Sad? Sure, somewhat. However,
I’ll save my lament for people,
real actual human beings,
that have been thrown to the dogs.
This happens every day.
I have no grief for a nation
of rich vampires, fat from gorging
on the blood of the third world,
and from the meat of the planet earth.
What’s that, America?
You say that times are tough?
Too bad, you've had it coming
for a long, long, time.
james lee jobe 

Sonny Boy Williamson - Help Me

May some kindness find you today, which also means I hope you share some kindness today. I'll try, too. Life is as good as we make it.

jlj

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

translations & ghost stories

It was the story of a ghost who wrote in French. Or was it? It might have been that the story of a ghost was written in French, or perhaps it was a French story that was ghost written. Translations are a lot of work; this is why I don’t trust the Bible.

james lee jobe

I owe my solitude to other people.

Alan Watts

Autobiography of Thud, a poem by Omotara James

Ghost stories written as algebraic equations. Little Emily at the blackboard is very frightened. The X's look like a graveyard at night. The teacher wants her to poke among them with a piece of chalk. All the children hold their breath. The white chalk squeaks once among the plus and minus signs, and it's quiet again.

Charles Simic, 1928-2023 CE

Your voice when it deepened,

the sound of you.

Your embrace, it only grew with time,

like a bear grows in strength.

Your eyes, sad and tired,

even when you laughed.

Your truth, all that you never told me

of the hard life that you lived.

Your death, the terrible sink hole

that swallowed me, your father.

james lee jobe

Muddy Waters, Rollin' & Tumblin'

Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.

Noam Chomsky

jlj

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

the seed I scatter

(All of the images today are street art from Madrid, Spain.)

How sublime of you, sister

to teach me to read

two years before I began school

such a fine foothold

for you to give me, a gift

I remember, even now

how grand it felt to see a word

and recognize it, to understand

and when I was twelve

another gift from you, sister

a new set of encyclopedias

with a two-volume dictionary

and a set of classic novels

all with matching bindings

so lovely, so well made

you included Shakespeare’s sonnets

the world opened up for me

my big sister, my friend

thank you

james lee jobe

Sparrows come for the seed I scatter on the patio

sometimes this pair of doves will join them in the feast

but no others

this wide valley is full of birds

pigeons hummingbirds shrikes

chickadees swallows bushtits

but only the sparrows and the two doves

come to my patio to eat

I like to think that they are keeping it a secret

ssh!

james lee jobe

Teenage James. In the living room my mother had this picture of Jesus. If you looked at it one way Jesus was suffering on the cross, but if you moved your head a little Jesus was healed, dressed in white, and rising up through the air, presumably to heaven. That was the room where I most enjoyed making out with my girlfriends, under the watchful eye of Christ. I am certain that He approved.

james lee jobe

He who binds to himself a joy

Doth the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

William Blake

jlj