If you are truly a damn fool, then follow me.

Grandmother went to sleep full of the emptiness that everyone is afraid of. She is sleeping across a blue landscape, under a green sky. This is a land that smells like jasmine, but that doesn't tell us much. Grandmother is dreaming of a day like this one, only in heaven, not here. She wants to take walks above the shore. She wants to sip tea and read those old books again, the ones she always loved. In a dream, anything is possible - flying, a new love, you can even be young again. Grandmother isn't afraid of the emptiness, she knows better than that. Look at her, smiling in her sleep. So peaceful, so relaxed. Grandmother isn't waking up again.  

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If you are truly a damn fool, then follow me. Life doesn't really need any help from either one of us. Naked people pretend to admire each other when really they are only admiring themselves. The television sets are speaking to ghosts, and telling fantastic lies. Don’t listen in. I am not going to sink in the mud of it all. I am not naked, and likewise, I am not a ghost. Follow me. We can swim alone in the river of the sky, held aloft by waves of satire and rivers of air. We can break out, through the rings and moons of Saturn. This is a population of toads and goats, and I am from the tribe of Uz. Walk with me to the border, and then on into the sky. And after that, who gives a damn?

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The arthritis in my knees makes it difficult to trim my toenails. Is this not the stuff of poems? 

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One day our paths will cross and we'll talk over coffee, real talk, not chitchat, the truth about our lives such as they are, and when we part it will be with an embrace in case we never meet again we will, at least, know the feel of each other. 

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Worth noting; I recently found a letter that the late poet Jack Hirschman wrote me 25 years ago. My mind can be scattered, I had forgotten it. Thank goodness I had put it away for safe keeping. The letter is sweet and kind and full of support for my poetry. It means so much to me. 

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The empty streets of another world. You gave away all of your possessions, keeping only what could fit into one duffel bag. On the bus you couldn't forget your sins, so you counted them over and over in the dark, on your fingers. Miles and counties and states rolled past the bus window. Day and then night. Bad coffee and burgers. The end of the line was in another world. You disembarked, and with the duffel bag on your shoulder, you walked the empty streets of the next life, a life no better or worse than the one you left behind.

James Lee Jobe 

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I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us. 

Walt Whitman 

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Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's buddhist morality.

Brad Warner

MARCUS MILLER, Power

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? 

Vincent van Gogh 

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Derive happiness in oneself from a good day’s work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us. 

Henri Matisse

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James