christmas cards that mention hell

by Vicki Chrisman

I am sending messages out on the fire of my being
in scorched words on broken tongues
through shriveled ears
onto scraps of old paper still smeared with hope
on a old-time telegraph
with wires strung across the valleys of heaven
like a house-gift to devils
like a christmas carol that mentions hell
like my solitude
like my lone virtue of steadfastness to you
ignore the messages or heed them
it doesn't matter this is your life to live
tonight when the moon hides
his handsome face behind the clouds
when the stars are calling the lost ones home
when the world shivers and wraps itself in a blanket
and when the night is sitting there
waiting for the next day to begin
I will tapTapTAP out the next message
disguised in a poem

A windy afternoon, and for a couple of hours a murder of crows claim a part of the neighborhood for their own, and they rule over us like noisy overlords. Like my neighbors, I am busy, and I pretend that I don't care. But I do. The steady cawCawCAWs remind me that this isn't my world, that the world is something of which I am a small part.

immense blue tears are streaming down the face of the saxophone the enraged sunset breaks the red dinner plates on the tiles of the green kitchen floor how warm the brown valley soil against the bare brown feet of children the saxophone is a warrior's sword cutting open the purple in the human soul bare feet tapping to the downbeat time is an orange friend time is a gray enemy and often time is just indifferent this pain is valid proof of existence there the red plates are all broken and the sun has gone down into the fuchsia veils of a soft evening the saxophone blows golden slowly deliberately and achingly sorrowful the children aren't listening now playing instead a yellow and almost silent game

-for dexter gordon-

the sun shines out strong after a short rain and the sky cleared fast like a rabbit taking off from my sidewalk I can hear a lark asking, "which souls are awake?" mine is little friend

damn all liars am I getting old yes but I am still dangerous I know the truth and I am not afraid to tell it

by james lee jobe

"Solitary is as necessary to our sanity as the forest where no one goes, as the waterfall in a canyon which no one has ever seen or heard." Alan Watts

"Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes." Shunryu Suzuki

"Perhaps the most dangerous temptation to Christianity is to get itself officialized in some version by a government." Wendell Berry

"I wanted to be successful, not famous." George Harrison

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james