2/21/2023

My heart is tired; isn’t yours?


We were born, and there was no hate in us. Underneath, aren’t we all just dreamers? Human beings with something in our spirit that moves us? We need acceptance after so many years of separation. My heart is tired; isn’t yours? If only governments and humans could share a kiss. A gentle touch. There would be no detention camps, no walls. Police wouldn’t come to the door at night if we rose up bearing the kindness with which we were born. There was no hate in us. Person helping person, surely that is our nature. Where we are born means nothing. Where we would be is a matter of preference and need. Let us be newborn again, and embrace each other with open arms, let us know us know each other with open hearts.

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The 1970s. San Francisco, Mission St, between 2nd St & 16th. Walking distance from both Greyhound and Trailways buses. Run-down diners with 2 egg breakfasts, no meat, for $1.25 or so. I could a rent the saddest room in the city for $25 a week. Messenger companies hiring. Cheap pot, cheap wine. Goodwill and Salvation Army 1 block over on Howard. One dollar movies on Market, 1 block the other way. Except for work, I could go for weeks without conversation. Weekends, a 25 cent streetcar ride to Ocean Beach. Poetry readings somewhere almost every night, sit in the back and scribble in my notebook. Smoking pot openly on the street, never a problem. Or spend all day in the stacks at the SF library reading books from 1910, forgotten poets. I had no past, no future, lived day to day. Lucky Strikes. Street vendor hot dogs. Jack Spicer poems. That summertime layer of fog across the city and the bay.

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There are signs… if you look for them. Species of creatures dying out, a rising sea, a smaller arctic. A feeling of dread on the population, people moving on in fear and desperation. And the answer? It isn’t ‘better politics.’ The answer is in our hearts, in our spirits. We need silence. We need emptiness. Friend, what we need is… less. 

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Cross the river and death will follow. Spend the years building and death will follow. Love the others or no one at all and death will follow. Plant a vast garden and death will follow. Be a sinner or a saint and death will follow. Tunnel through the rock bones of the earth and death will follow. Raise a family and death will follow. A lifetime alone on the mountain and death will follow. Play it safe or play it foolish and death will follow. Give praise and thanks or live in denial and death will follow. Death will follow. There is but one certainty, my friend, death will follow. 

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Opening the cages, my birds fly through the house. 

Mis amiguitos, I give you the little bit of freedom that I can. 

Para Pablo y Pico.

-

james lee jobe 



Kawase Hasui - Snow at Zojoji Temple


Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

William James


The reason that remarkable stories of forgiveness take our breath away is that we instantly feel the liberation in the lifting of boundaries, the end of separation, of “inside” and “outside.”

Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker


Give without expecting anything in return, not even a "thank you." That is unconditional kindness, everything else is ego. But remember to accept everything with gratitude, including other people's kindness, for it isn't something to which you are entitled, it is a gift we can all give to one another.

Timber Hawkeye 



ON A SUNDAY, a poem by Quincy Troupe 


her aint even at de funeral, a poem by avery r. young


In which a Party for the Living is more Fun than one for the Dead, a poem by Luisa A. Igloria 



JUNIOR WELLS, Give Me One Reason 

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jlj 

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