With a calm honest voice, Jacoby explores the realities of American life where hope and prosperity have always been on streets paved with violence. This is not, and never has been, a land of the quick draw clean gunfight. In dusty cowboy towns of the 19^th century, one would more likely to be shot in the back of the head, out-numbered and ambushed, like today, a young black man shot five times with his back turned on the police, hands in the air. Jacoby faces this reality "like an urban buddhist / never taking his boot / off the neck of life."