Should you be cold, I will light the fire.

Vincent van Gogh,
Field with Flowers near Arles, 1888

All through the empty night I walked the dirt lane,

Feeling my way along with my cane, my eyes covered

By a white cloth tied around my head. Just for fun,

For a laugh, the executioner had set my cap on top of it,

To mock my worldly and pointless pride. Death followed,

Carrying that damn scythe. Crows came too, hungry.

Every step was a mile long, and every minute lasted

An hour. The air was dry and still, I could many sounds;

The heavy footsteps, the ragged breath, the crows' wings

Beating in flight. I could hear Death following behind me,

As she always has, as she always will. As it is with you, too.

We all walk that lane as far as we can, never quite as far

As we hope for, and damn few of us ever see the end.

Eventually the scythe just suddenly whistles through the air. 

-

I kept one prisoner in the brick oven,

And I kept another in a lovely wooden box that a friend built.

Dark angels watched over them.

Those were the hottest days of a Texas summer.

Horseflies buzzed them, nibbling at their wounds,

Tasting the salt in their sweat, tasting their blood.

And me? I worked in the pine woods,

Clearing a right-of-way for power lines.

I knelt in churches that had no pews,

Churches that were built of unpainted wood,

And I prayed for relief.

I walked the thankless miles carrying a chainsaw and a can of fuel.

I carried more prisoners in the pockets of my overalls,

And in my boots.

I fed them the lies my father told me,

Those same lies that your father told you,

And though their sentences were harsh,

They were not hungry.

In this way justice was served.

-

If your plate is empty, bring it to me, and I will fill it.

Should you be cold, I will light the fire.

When the day is hard and heavy, return to me here.

I will carry the burden for as long as we both shall breathe.

In this life I will take your part, you do not walk alone.

-

staying up late, eat-

ing tangerines and writing 

poems, a fine life

-

james lee jobe 

Mature faith is anchored in our own experience of the truth, centered in the deeper understanding of the nature of the mind and body that we come to in meditation practice.

Sharon Salzberg

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

Steven Wright

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

Amiri Baraka

Link: Kink, a poem by Imani Davis

Link: My Mother Would Be a Falconress, a poem by Robert Duncan 

Miles Davis & Sonny Rollins, Doxie 

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-jlj