My Lemons. Not Yet Ripe.
—Poems and Photos by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
The air is here to encase your lungs in love, and the earth exists so that you have a place to make your stand. Your skin is across your bones because your heart is boundless, and friend, your heart can expand to cover the universe. Your skin keeps all of your joy contained in one place, here, where you need it. Even the horrors that you endure exist to open the door to the blessings. Everything is a blessing; you live, you breathe, your mind is gifted with sight, you are a soul, one with all that is. Cast off the shadow and rise. Now.
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What do I want? To see the flowers wake up at dawn and spread their petals before the unending glory of the newly risen sun. That's all.
Pico Verde Jobe
Pale, it stirs on the small, hard cot. The air is thick and still, and far too hot 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.
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I am visiting Putah Creek, where I set some of my son’s ashes adrift, when the beautiful cry of a pheasant rips through the air, cutting me like a fresh sorrow. Every new day is another year of suffering.
I am visiting Putah Creek, where I set some of my son’s ashes adrift, when the beautiful cry of a pheasant rips through the air, cutting me like a fresh sorrow. Every new day is another year of suffering.
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Even if I found enlightenment,
I would still need to clean up this yard.
Dang.
Poet and Grandkid
I try to leave some emptiness in life, it feels right to do so. Only one day happens at a time, and that works for me. I can see through my life to my death, and likewise, I can see through my death and so better enjoy living. Just now the daylight grew and covered all of the sky. How lovely.
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The fire in the stove is built from the sound of dogs howling. This fire has howling to burn instead of wood, and this fire is the edge of night, its sharpest corner, its finest and longest dream. This is the corner where the avenues of love and indifference meet. Muddy Waters is playing a long blues riff on guitar and I am kissing your lips, one lip at a time, then you smile and the spell is cast in shadow and thought. In this spell we are stars from different galaxies that stand naked together, toe to toe, face to face, shining. We are as bright as the pleasure of living. In this spell the earthquakes have names like old blues men from another generation, from earlier decades, with names like Hambone and Sonny. I am lost, and I say that out loud for you to hear. There is a moth drawn to the light of the stove the way that life is drawn to death. The way that death is drawn to life. That moth's time is almost up. And you and I? You put your soft and gentle hands to the sides of my face and pull me down to you, and then you very gently bite my lower lip. Fire and time and spells mean nothing to us anymore.
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Today’s LittleNip:
The endless pale heavens often call out to me, reminding me that I am alive and free. This moment.
—James Lee Jobe
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Our thanks to James Lee Jobe for our Saturday-morning wake-up call! As the sign says, all we have is now… Next Friday, James will be hosting The Other Voice at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Patwin Rd. in Davis, featuring Vincent Kobelt and Ann G. Walker, plus open mic, 7:30pm.
That’s next week. Tonight from 5-8pm, Sac. Poetry Center Art Gallery presents its Second Saturday Reception for this month’s exhibit, “Broad Way”, broadsides by local poets/artists to celebrate SPC’s 40th anniversary. Also tonight, the Belle Cooledge Library on S. Land Park Dr. in Sacramento will present Poetry of the Emcee: Literary Strategies of Rap and Hip Hop with Eric Duran, 6pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa, celebrating the poetry that is the current moment ~
—Anonymous
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