a frayed flag smoking with blood

Kitano Tsunetomi

Pale, it stirs on the small, hard cot. The air is thick and still, and far too warm for dawn. The pale thing stares for a moment at the ceiling, and then it rises. What will today be? Seconds that pass like hammers on steel. Hours like death. Every day is another eternity. It opens the small window and peers out between the steel bars. Birdsong. A breeze that carries something new, something that names the day and sends the night off to another part of this world. The golden light of early morning. Hope. Pale and alone, it looks up at the changing sky.

james lee jobe 

The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.

Atiśa Dīpa kara Śrījñāna

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The slow and empty death of patriotism.

A frayed flag smoking with blood - Georg Trakl

The wounded have wrapped the red, white, and blue flag 

around their stumps and gone to bed. 

They have been given oxycontin and Jesus. 

"Yes, you killed thousands, but god wishes it so 

because he loves America most of all." 

They are told this when their night terrors come. 

They are told this when the ghosts of their victims 

silently line up to caress the aching stumps. 

They are told this when their children cry 

and they must struggle just to cross the room 

and comfort them. 

Oxycontin and Jesus and America, 

arm in arm in arm, 

at the head of the parade, 

the frayed flags waving in the cool sunlight, 

smoking with human blood. 

james lee jobe

He who conquers others is strong. He who conquers himself is mighty. 

Zen Proverb

Respect the dead, even when your body is full of crows, and coffins line the bitter streets like people waiting for a parade to pass by. Respect the dead, even when your body is full of snow and the sidewalk inside you is impassable. Tonight the crows are cawing and the snow is thick. Hold your hand out in the air, watch the snowflakes land and melt on your warm skin. Respect the dead and pray for peace. Just drop to your knees and speak your truth. When the sun returns again, you and the crows will be far away, but the snow and the dead will remain.   

james lee jobe 

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

Isaac Asimov 

A hard day in some ways, yet there are blessings, too. I sure hope that I never lose the ability to truly see that good things happen all the time, even when bad things are going on. Especially then.

james lee jobe

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