Truths, big and small, that are not for us.

Amos Amit

YOU BUILT YOUR HOUSE WITH SEVEN WORDS. Your doctor is prescribing new syllables. Take them at meals. A Protestant moves through the underbrush, but his tall hat and his weak prepositions give him away. You have him in your crosshairs. When you play chess, you always want the black pieces, and when you write, you try to avoid using too many adjectives. Did you know that you can build a year with only seven seconds? That you can live without vowels or judgment? You can lose your mind and still find your way to the store, or to the ammunition. It happens everyday. Seven stores, seven bullets, seven nouns. Bodies that are still on the cold, waxed floor.

james lee jobe

"Silence can communicate on a level that words cannot approach."

B. D. Schiers

THE BOX WHERE I WAS BORN 

I was born in the box where we hide 

Those things that we are not allowed 

To see. Like the extra lives for cats. 

Or the truth about Hangar Eighteen. 

The difference between the last day 

Of autumn and the first day of winter. 

Truths, big and small, that are not for us. 

In somber times, the box is closed up 

Tight. I just happened to be born 

On a cheerful day. The birds sang, 

The sun shone, and God left the box open. 

Light got in and I got out. Spontaneous. 

Unplanned. I had no secrets of my own, 

And so I borrowed freely from the box. 

Everyone needs a secret or two. 

Would you like to know the truth 

About the grassy knoll? The suffering 

In the Garden of Gethsemane? 

Come. I will hold the lid up for you. 

You can take a look inside for yourself. 

james lee jobe 

“Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel among fools.”

Dōgen

THE CITY IN MY CHEST 

I know where sorrow lives. Baltimore. 

A city where the hungry are stacked 

In great piles of woe and death. 

A city in my chest. The rain tells me 

The truth about being a sad person. 

Sadness has a mailing address here. 

I think that I feel the most alive 

When I am lost in a world of grief 

And sorrow. I was born in Baltimore. 

Friend, I know how to suffer. 

In fact, it is what I do best. 

james lee jobe 

Amos Amit

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jlj