pulverized diamonds

I

2009-12-10T04:00:13Z

The naked, starving mind is a pitiful beast. Alone,

cloaked in shadow, too naive --and stupid-- to be very corrupt,

this beast suffers like Job in his boil-ridden

and ash-covered worst moment. This is the Self; fuck it.

Ego is both its own reward and its bane. Soul

wants soul, but the mind needs something more,

to worshiped, or at least obeyed.

The mind is a wall, not brick, but made of bones

from the earth by some long forgotten craft or magick.

It is the naked, starving mind that finds a fiery poem;

the very poem that the soul has been searching for.

The Id, the one, the master, it owns the world, it eats

everything. Why don't you just surrender? I did.

--

Yes, the title is "I" -- a re-do of one from a couple years ago. I had this line in there that didn't belong, so I 86ed it, and added the bit about the mind wanting to be worshiped. Pessimistic goddamn poem! I think that's what I like about it. It isn't there to cheer us up.

all good things / jobe

Lonely

2009-12-10T03:45:51Z

A high tide washes the bones

out to sea. No one knows

whose bones they are. The police

are not called. No prayers

are said, no congregation mourns

for the deceased. Even God

isn't watching. The bones are gone,

the beach is clean.

A gull walks across the sand

but finds nothing there

to eat.

--

all good things / jobe

poetry event in Sacramento, California

2009-12-10T03:12:48Z

THE SACRAMENTO POETRY CENTER
Presents
Squaw Valley Review Reading
with
Joe Atkins, L.A. Jones, Lawrence Kaplun,
Theresa McCourt and Wendy Trevino
Monday, Dec. 14 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Bob Stanley

Joe Atkins, an alumni of CSUS & UCD, lives in Sacramento. Currently he is a freelance writer and homeowner. He enjoys Facebook, Twitter, blogs, hulu, netflix, movies, bookstores, MP3s, concerts, drinking, poker, his spouse, his cat, and google/excel spreadsheets.

Lisa Jones (L. A. Jones) co-edited The Squaw Valley Review 2008 and is the Interview Editor for Poetry Now. Her work has won local prizes, is forthcoming in Tule Review, and published in Tea Party, Convergence (on-line), Poetry Now, and Qarrtsiluni's Journaling the Apocaplypse (on-line and print anthology). She has a Ph.D. in sociology, but is most proud of her studies with Camille Norton, Kim Addonizio, Susan Kelly-Dewitt, and the great staff at Squaw Valley and the Napa Valley Writer's Conference.

Lawrence Kaplun co-edited the Squaw Valley Review 2008. He was raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in San Francisco, where he works for the California Academy of Sciences. His poems have appeared online in Limp Wrist Magazine.

Theresa McCourt won an Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship in poetry in October 2008, and in November 2008, graduated from the Artist Residency Institute through the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. Her credits include a 1st place in the 2007 Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Contest, and publications include Peter Parasol, mamazine.com, Poetry Now, Rattlesnake Review, and Toyon.

Wendy Trevino lives and writes in San Francisco. Her work has previously appeared in Makeout Creek and Faultline and is forthcoming in the super-fun journal West Wind Review.

The Ghost of Jobe

2009-12-09T04:27:21Z

I haunt
the Sacramento streets
where no one sees me,
a soul
on the loose!
Invisible
on the Capital City Freeway,
a spectre
cruising down Broadway.
I walk
among the people
at the State Capitol
and not one person
will notice me,
not even the state police.
I am a ghost.
I have no opinion.
I have no reason.
I am an empty being
that doesn't even belong here.
I should just
blow
away
on the wind.
Like
dust.

--

all good things / jobe

What Beauty Is

2009-12-08T21:57:34Z

The curves of your breasts! Like summer they are,
warm as sunshine, and as sweet as a summer night.
Curved like a smile. Curved like a first kiss.
Light as a daydream.

The shape of your lips! Like waves on the ocean they are,
wet and salty, as delicious as one's finest moment.
Soft as a promise. Soft as new love.
Kind and forgiving.

To see you walk! Graceful as heaven you are,
floating or flying, sexy, but not a girl, a woman full, confident.
One with the world that you walk upon.
Easy and slow.

Beauty? It's the shape of your life.
Beauty is the very breath of you.

---

all good things / jobe

The Red Sun of Krypton

2009-12-08T16:44:22Z

-for Denise Grace-

You have in your chest the blazing red sun of Krypton,

And the light of that sun warms worlds that are unseen,

Worlds without even a single rumor.

In your soul there is a white river that washes granite boulders,

That shines with flecks of gold in the sand, the gold was always there,

Even in the hard, cold beginning.

You walked so many miles that the road is on a first name basis with you!

“Good morning, Denise,” it tells you, even before it is truly light,

Before it is really morning.

Another lap makes another year, and the miles go by faster and faster,

Miles and years, and there are things you loved

That you now seldom even remember. Time!

But every new morning is just that, Denise; there are worlds yet to be,

Places where the red sun of Krypton has not yet been seen,

Your chest, your heart, your light.

To light these worlds is your destiny.

---

For Denise's birthday.

all good things / jobe

Yule 2006

2009-12-07T17:20:37Z

Yule. A quarter moon southwesters in early evening.
From the darkness above, the lonely sounds of geese.

An uneasiness, an uncertainty lies across the earth.
An old cat with no tail watches the empty street.

Valley oaks, long nude of leaves, whisper in a chill wind.
Commanding clouds slide in, covering the moon; thick, strong.

In some other world, its war. Iraq. Somalia. Afghanistan.
Soldiers die, civilians die - hard politics. Hatred.

Not here. Here, in bottomland, wild herons hunt. Free.
People go to the market and buy tomatoes, oranges.

No one believes that this evil will happen to their children.
And no one speaks out against the evil that they cannot see.

--

Three more years of war have passed since I wrote this. A damn shame, and I mean that literally. I am ashamed of the Iraqi and Afghani wars as an American, as a human.

all good things / jobe

What We Have

2009-12-07T16:38:05Z

A human can born many times over.
A rich, blue ocean of night
washes these rebirths. Even a fallen star
sees its own angel in this ocean.
A rock cliff.
A sharp fall.
Boulders below that are beaten
again and again with cold waves
as hard as hammers.
Such is the human condition.
We have that, and we have tears.

Something like a song, but not a song,
graces this valley at night. A music
of silence, wind in the pine,
a barn owl listens,
then lifts, and is gone.
Below him the fields
are flush with life, fertile, kissed
by summer sun and winter rain.
Such is this deep valley.
Long and broad.
We have that, and we have time.

Death isn't a curse, it's a doorway
that you will walk through,
to another life, another world,
a spectral valley, or a world
of light beams, or maybe
Cleveland some sixty years later.
Hold up your head.
Tomorrow is not certain,
no fate is etched in bitter stone;
there is always hope.
We have that, and we have each other.

--

all good things / jobe

I Didn't Comb My Hair Again Today

2009-12-06T22:37:36Z

The bitter gray of the sky against the molasses of time. The smell

of her perfume on the clothes that she didn't bother to take.

The stubble left behind after the wheat is gleaned.

A lonely wind. The emptiness of the sound

when the car does not start. The decades long gone

that will always haunt me, those ghosts of Jobe.

A hard winter rain on an empty street. The harsh click

of the light-switch when I wake up alone and the room is so cold.

Words that can never be taken back, and that which I didn't say.

Dreams that were given up, abandoned or beaten down.

Tears that were harsh, and in vain, that vein in my temple

throbbing

and

hot.

--

A first draft, like the others today.

all good things / jobe

Alone in the Jungle of Ten Million People

2009-12-06T17:35:59Z

I could scream and no one

would hear it, long cries

echoing in canyons of steel

and forests of concrete

where asphalt is the lesser god

and currency is the greater,

and the scraps left behind from my kills

never last for long, even the bared bones

are carried off by tiny beings with teeth.

When I fall I won't last long either,

strips of Jobe flesh gnawed on

under a jungle moon with the music

of sirens and automoblie crashes,

little angry things taking me into their bodies,

their stomachs, their bloodstreams

which are like watersheds,

out with their excrement

and back onto the jungle floor

once again.

My soul is of this jungle,

hunters await me in quiet blinds,

my hide to be tanned, my meat

to be eaten around the campfires

of downtown alleys, in the shadows

of banks and pawn shops,

on broken sidewalks, under the growls

of painted policemen,

and once this meat is gone

I am free.

--

all good things / jobe

Prayer for Poets

2009-12-06T16:58:08Z

-for Lori Williams-

She will guide your hand and your heart, ink

to blood and back again, a soul of words

and music of language, a gift of muse

to bring you hope in the saying of all things.

She will protect you from the frights of shadow

and frigid midnights lonely and searching

for anything with meaning or hope;

Her hope shall be joyous and orgasmic.

She will sing your comfort in starlight

and summer breeze, warmth itself,

and in yourself a language will spin

like a dancer drunk with happiness,

and the words will come.

The words will come.

--

all good things / jobe

Geese & Mortality

2009-12-06T01:27:51Z

It's autumn, and overhead geese cry, but I never stop them

and ask what the trouble is. They're like mad generals

who are late for some imaginary battle, all flapping and noisy.

Often at night I call out to spirits, and my voice becomes fire

and earth, and I am joined with spirits who have many names,

who come in many guises and from many scattered scenes.

Geese have dreams. Dreams of cold water and tasty minnows.

Or dreams of the fields passing below, where tired farmers

bring in the alfalfa before their own dreams of winter can begin.

I am not held by this Jobe body! The lamp of this life gives off

a rich, blue hue that invades the room and the senses. The light

is not contained, James, it is given out. The light is for everyone.

all good things / jobe

Wake Up Call

2009-12-05T11:40:15Z

Little poems come to me at night;

2am, 3am, waking me up,

shaking my tired old shoulders.

"Write me," says the little poem

about my childhood. "No! Write me,"

says the little poem about a lover

that I had in 1975. Then,

maybe it's 3:30 or 3:45,

and I am plodding back down

the cold hallway to the bedroom again,

and a little poem passes me

going the other way.

"I left a wake up call for 4:30,"

the little bastard tells me.

--

A rough draft. 3:39am.

all good things / jobe

Larks In Flight

2009-12-05T02:38:58Z

Opening

her gown, the larks

of her breasts fly long

and free, with one lone

feather floating

back to me

Speaking of the Dead

2009-12-05T02:30:31Z

If I am to speak of the dead, then I must walk with the dead.
I must keep their names and memories here on my lips .

Who are these ghosts that I feel in the air? That I see in the fog?
Beings of wisp and thought? Floating where I cannot walk?

The air itself is a ghost city, a secret purgatory of the all but invisible,
alive in shadowy flight! I see them. I think you do, too.

The walking is hard, sluggish, like walking through deep snow.
For strength, just speak the name of one who is dead.

If we are to speak of the dead, then we must walk with the dead.
Let us speak all the names. Let us hold the memories. Walking.

--

all good things / jobe

The Blossoming

2009-12-04T04:05:41Z

The Moon blossomed

again

last night,

white

against the winter skeleton

of my peach tree.

Every month

She comes again

for my prayers

and my slender tribute.

The Moon

is the nighttime mirror

of what I carry in my heart.

Together we shine.

--

all good things / jobe

two Northern California poetry events

2009-12-03T14:31:32Z

from Connie Post:

VALONA DELI SECOND SUNDAY POETRY SERIES
Sunday December 13, 2009 4 - 6 p.m
1327 Pomona Street Crockett

Hosted by Connie Post

Our Featured Poets are

Joan Gelfand and Kit Kennedy

Joan Gelfand: An award winning writer, Joan’s poetry, fiction, reviews and essays have appeared in national magazines, anthologies and literary journals. President of the Women’s National Book Association, Joan earned her MFA from Mills College and is the Fiction Editor for Zeek Magazine. Joan’s widely acclaimed second poetry collection “A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams” was published by San Francisco Bay Press in January 2009.

Kit Kennedy: Kit has had her poetry published in Blood Orange Review; Bombay Gin; Ginosko, Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2009; Runes; Saranac Review; you say. say; and Van Gogh’s Ear. CLWN WR Press will publish When Eating Oysters, Only the Present Is Possible: petite poems in 2010. She hosts the reading series at Gallery Café in San Francisco.

Remember!
The Valona Deli "Take One Leave One" Lending Library - Bring one Poetry journal to donate and take one from the lending Library.
(please no donations of local poets' books and really "take one, leave one")

For our wonderful open mic: (One of the best open mics in the Bay Area!) Please always bring a "back up" short poem (20 lines or less) ! In case we have a very large crowd, everyone can be heard with the "lightening round" open mic if necessary! Otherwise, bring a poem 40 lines or less for open mic.

Remember to stay for the wonderful Terry Henry Trio Jazz at 6 p.m.!

Please contact me with questions: Connie@poetrypost.com

--

from Tim Kahl:

Presents

Zoe Keithley

in a Roan Press Presents reading of Crow Song
with a special “post-natal” appearance by Roan press publisher Brad Buchanan

Monday, Dec. 7 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street

Zoe Keithley's stories have appeared in the North American Review, American Fiction, F3, Emergence, Pigeon, Dogwood and other journals. Her fiction has won a fellowship in Prose from the Illinois Arts Council and finalist awards from Zoetrope, American Fiction, Dogwood, Emergence and Hyphen. A novel and short story collection are circulating. She lives in Sacramento and is at work on a second novel, teaches private writing students locally and at a distance, and is learning to play and compose music on the banjo.

--

all good things / jobe

jamesleejobe@gmail.com

War

2009-12-03T03:55:11Z

Rancor, and a bone from the moon. The blood

of rape on the villager's thighs. A poverty

of birth. Rancor, and pity and a kiss

from the dull blade of the broken world.

The world in ashes and grief. The fat

that fell sizzling into the fire. Rancor,

and your testicles removed, your ovaries removed,

your fallopian tubes tied to another world.

Rancor, and your eyes cut out. The sound

the prisoner made when the brand burnt its way in.

Flesh in agony. The earth out of balance

and without a soul. Rancor,

and the armies marching to hell.

Hell itself.

--

Came to me at dinner. A first draft, innit?

all good things / jobe

James, What's That On Your Fingers?

2009-12-02T16:34:37Z

Your body tastes of figs and olive oil,

and I am here to devour you, bite

after delicious bite. Your heart tastes

of the kindness of strangers

and of the faith that only a child knows.

I love that, so I'll eat your heart last,

holding it in my red-stained fingers.

--

all good things / jobe

The War Museum Tour

2009-12-02T10:59:24Z

Everyone keep moving, please. In this room

we keep all the legs blown off by landmines

in the war - no touching! These legs

are not preserved, that's why the smell

is so bad. We just keep the fans on

to blow the flies away. Questions? Yes,

there is a different room for arms,

but not for heads. We lovingly

present the heads for burial

by the families left behind. Besides,

what kind of museum would keep

a room full of heads? That would be sick.

Ok, let's move along.

--

Of course, this isn't the poem I really want to write about the war, it's just the one I got tonight. A first draft at 3am.

all good things / jobe

Dark and Still

2009-12-01T03:27:55Z

I've been digging this hole for ten thousand years

and I still haven't found the treasure.

I'm starting to have doubts.

It's been ten thousand years of dirt and stone!

The frightening hole goes on and on, it's hopeless

to continue and pointless to go back.

I have gone down so deep

that I have become something like shadow.

Not shadow,

but something just as dark

and still. In the hole that I dig

a soul and a shadow and a stone

can easily be the same,

cold, silent.

--

A first draft, after supper.

all good things / jobe

The Ghosts of New York

2009-11-30T11:21:32Z

My life feels thicker
since the war began,
and walking is slow,
akin to wading
through waist-deep water.
I feel heavy when I walk,
my clothes have the weight
of a suit of armor,
weighing
me
down.

It has been become
more difficult to breathe
since the war began,
each gasp has become
one of the impossible feats
of Hercules,
and when I breathe
a Minotaur must die,
a hydra
is
beheaded.

Sleep has become a war
of its own, some nights
I win the fight,
most nights I lose.
The times when I do sleep
the nightmares begin,
horrors where I dig
through endless rubble,
finding rotten corpses.

My head aches
on my left temple
quite often, and I must push
my thumb down hard
and deep
into my pain,
as if my digit is
slammed
down
right into my throbbing brain,
easing the pressure.

Oh! The Great Mother
must have screamed!
All those souls slammed
down into Her body at once!
The Great Mother screamed!
NO!
NO!
NO!
Her children, those ghosts
of New York
pushed into Her,
violating Her
even as all their lives
became ghosts!
And as everyone of us
is a part of the Great Mother,
so everyone of us
is connected to those ghosts!
And so I scream along with Her,
"I AM A GHOST OF NEW YORK!"
"I AM A GHOST OF NEW YORK!"

---

I was producing the Sacramento end of the syndicated Mark & Brian Show (morning radio show out of Los Angeles) on the morning of September 11, 2001, and my friend of many years Kat Maudru was doing the news. We held each other up that hard morning, when we both just wanted to fall apart. We were standing side by side, watching, when the second plane hit. I felt numb for days after, and had nightmares of digging for bodies. Finally, I took some time off, just a few days, and went up into the Sierra Nevada to camp alone on the bank of the Yuba River. One night there was a huge storm that soaked my camp, my tent, everything. Lightning struck every near me, the river raged, and I sat in my car and wrote this poem, which does not satisfy me. I still take it out sometimes and have another go at it.

all good things / jobe

What Morning Owes Us. Nothing.

2009-11-30T04:07:38Z

Dark one, lovely dark one, with faith

resting on your lips, with silence

in the red wine of your kiss,

my seductive dark one, dance

here with me. Let us be as naked

as the forest in winter. Let us dance

naked on this stage and damn

the world! Dark lover! Yes!

Move with me to the beat

of the goatskinned bodhran,

to the darkest music that waits

in the sad secrets of your heart.

Bless my storied scars

as I bless yours. Lovely dark lover,

sweet midnight! Our passion lives

and grows in cool midnight!

Morning owes us nothing,

not even a tomorrow. So dance

with me, my dark one,

hold my beating heart

in your beautiful dark hands.

--

all good things / jobe

Poetry event, Sacramento, Monday, Nov. 30th

2009-11-29T13:48:42Z

from Tim Kahl --

Presents

Lucy Lang Day, Tom Miner and Diana Henning

Mon. Nov. 30, 2009 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Frank Graham
[Come see Frank’s photograph exhibit currently at the Pop-Up Gallery at 1719 25th Street]

Lucy Lang Day’s poetry collections are The Curvature of Blue (Cervena Barva Press, 2009), God of the Jellyfish (Cervena Barva Press, 2007), The Book of Answers (Finishing Line Press, 2006), Infinities (Cedar Hill Publications, 2002), Greatest Hits, 1975-2000 (Pudding House Publications, 2001), Wild One (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2000), Fire in the Garden (Mother's Hen, 1997) and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (Berkeley Poets' Workshop and Press, 1982), which was selected by Robert Pinsky, David Littlejohn, and Michael Rubin for the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature. She is a co-author of How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science: Strategies for Parents and Educators (Dale Seymour), and the author of the libretto for Eighteen Months to Earth, a science fiction opera with music by John Niec. Her first children's book, Chain Letter, was published by Heyday Books in 2005. She received her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University, and her M.A. in zoology and Ph.D. in science and mathematics education from the University of California at Berkeley. The founder and director of Scarlet Tanager Books, she is also director of the Hall of Health, a museum in Berkeley.

Tom Miner has two daughters, Sara and Mieke. He and his wife, Elisabeth, are avid hikers and travelers. Each summer he climbs a 14,000-foot peak and adds to the 70 countries he’s visited. In the 1980’s he published the poetry quarterly, Pinchpenny, and now teaches writing at Sacramento City College.

Dianna Henning’s poetry books include The Tenderness House, published by Poets Corner Press in Stockton, CA and a book from Black Buzzard Press entitled The Broken Bone Tongue. She shared a chapbook with poet Ioanna Veronika Warwick entitled "Settling Accounts" published by the Contemporary Review. Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, The Lullwater Review, Poetry International, Fugue, The Asheville Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review and the Seattle Review. She taught for California Poets in the Schools, through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program and through several California Arts Council grants, as well as through a recent California Humanities grant.

--

all good things / jobe

The Passing Moments

2009-11-29T04:52:19Z

'The morning is flying on the wings of his age
And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.'
-Dylan Thomas,

The morning has passed on the wings of my age,

flown by youth and dreams, flown by sorrow,

time itself is a sceptre of heraldry, or of foreign rule.

Who sped the clock to grey the hair and the aches?

How can time slip so slow at sunrise, then race

for the Vaca Hills in the west when shadow returns

to my late-day whiskers? Friend, don't mourn

for morning when each day is a fresh lifetime.

I tell myself, raise the sceptre, raise the glass;

watch the passing moments you call your time.

--

all good things / jobe