I saw the best minds of my generation
Brutally isolated from those around them
Surrounded by series of boxes
Some meant to relay
Some meant to contain
All passively made to control

And past all of these boxes we can see
The place where the grass is greener
Where the trees are taller and stronger
Where the animals live
We call that place wilderness
Some say we used to call it home
Some others say that when we did
Life was nasty
Brutish
Short
Well
Many of these days I would prefer that to
Long
Meaningless
Alienated
But it really depends on ones perspective

See the problem with Civilization is that somewhere down the line someone has to take the full force of the trauma
Whether that’s indigenous people
Robbed of their land
Forced to work in Rare Earth Mineral mines
Or sweatshop factories in foreign countries
Or Facebook content moderators in Arizona
Forced to be subjected to violent murders and graphic *******
Their bathroom breaks are monitored
They are ordered to stop praying if it takes too long
All so your racist uncle can share news articles from PatriotPress.com
And people who haven’t interacted with you in years can wish you a happy birthday
This is the price we pay for our convenience
This is the passive acceptance that our comfort is more valuable than their lives
I heard that the first megamachine was made with human parts
Now we witness that machine cannibalize itself

What is the alternative to this concrete techno-Hell?
I hope that one day we cast off this Leviathan whose tentacles wrap around our necks
To live a life of lower standards but higher meanings and ambitions
To live simply
With nature and not at its expense
It’s not a past to return to
But a future we fight for
Where the grass will be greener
But only because
We let it grow

I first saw you as
Old grey beard desert mountain man
Smoking a cigar
You called yourself an anarchist
A democrat with a small d
I dig that
You talked of the importance of the wild
The nature that’s out there somewhere on the edge of the madness we are all stuck with in the day to day drudgery we call “modern living”
You were well spoken and funny, and while I didn’t agree with everything you said, I felt I could go along with most of it

So then I, as fellow lover of nature and person without much else to do, dug deeper
You talked about fire watch towers, Arizona redneck bars, Nietzsche, Einstein, and watching the birds
You talked about sabotaging bulldozers and wanting to reach out and touch the mountain lion
You talked a lot about freedom too
How each person should be their own leader
And no one should be a boss
And about how whatever great expanse of wilderness, or wildness, we have left is the last refuges of our freedom

The freedom to be that very thing we crave more death, to be wild
To feel alive
We only crave death now because we never feel truly alive
Grinded down in alienated ******* “jobs”
Promise of nothing more than light pollution noise pollution and the regular plain old pollutions of modernity
We search for some kind of meaning
And the struggle to survive with our own two hands has always been the most meaningful action of the human spirit

So we need this wilderness to ******* and get lost in
To breath in deep and trip and fall and get a little *****
We need that wilderness for us to go postal in, however you take that to mean
And finally we need this wilderness because we are this wilderness
It’s in our bones and in our blood
Oh Ed, you and I aren’t alone in this call to the wild
Ask Fredy Perlman about the freedom of the insect and the bird
Ask Kevin Tucker what he thinks of predicide
Whether it’s shooting wolves from helicopters or poisoning carcasses with stric9 so coyotes die when they eat it
We defend coyotes here
And as a good Christian boy I believe that anyone who kills a wolf, except in self defense, should go to Hell

And maybe one day
I’ll go off into your Arizona deserts
Or Chris McCandless’s Alaskan expanse
And maybe I’ll live and maybe I’ll die
But I will be home
I will be free
And I will be thinking of you, Edward Abbey

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

“The tame, the domesticated, try to monopolize the word freedom; they'd like to apply it to their own condition. They apply the word "wild" to the free.” -Fredy Perlman

This is my appeal to Heaven
I was not made
For this
I was made for a little a-frame house in the forest
Using as little electricity as I can manage
I would build fires and send prayers to ancestors that were never mine
But I send prayers to them anyway
Because I don’t know if their children will do the same

I dream of a world that lies on the cusp of tomorrow and yesterday
Where all we have learned can come together with how we were meant to live
We exchanged that world for a lie we live in everyday
A lie that tells us what we are and what is nature are separate
A lie that has allowed us to continue tearing down all the things around us leaving us 12 years until all that we built begins to crumble
The Greeks wrote tragedies where people were punished for their hubris
How will our tragedy play out?

This is my appeal to Heaven
I was not made
For this
I begun exercising because I was inspired by those who came before me
Those who could throw spears hard enough to pierce animal hides
Or could pull back the entire draw of a bow
I hope for a simpler life where all the people I care for are within a short walk
I hope for things made by hand
I want to know how the gnats dance
I want to love the ways the winds move the trees
And I want to know the secrets of the birds and the forest creatures

This is my appeal to Heaven
I want to live wild
I want to be free


“Why this cult of wilderness?
Because we like the taste of freedom
Because we like the smell of danger” -Edward Abbey

Everyone is anxious
For Chekhov’s gun is still on the wall
It has not been fired
And we are soon approaching the next act

What do they wait for?
A provocation?!

Dear college age white boy
(Not unlike myself)
Your pseudo-nihilism bores them
We all know these things are just for show
Besides we see how much of an elitist you are
And how little you understand the words you are saying
If Nietzsche’s life were recast
You’d be the man beating the Turin Horse

Why does he say such things?
Does he understand the human mind, the human condition?!

We all wait for the collapse to come
And all of its children to return home
For we are already all aliens to each other
And we know what sweet flowers can grow from ashes
If life is to be a garden
I intend to be a worm

Does he really mean that?
We can see in his eyes he is not convinced

How long have we been going in these circles?
Or is it true that I am unique in this regard alone?
Every philosopher
Every poet
Every self perpetuating artist has their bag of tricks
I have whatever I can pillage

Everything that can be said
Has already been said
He am going back into the gallery
And drawing mustaches on all the faces

And as the audience leaves
Chekhov’s gun remains untouched, suspended by a thread

And this time only
There are no deeper meanings

I
Am
Nothing
And it is
Beautiful

Birds perched upon golden violin strings
Within grayscale trees and off-white leaves
Their chirps are replaced with funeral dirges and long extinct sea shanties
And well
I’m no ethnomusicologist
But I feel their eyes watching me
And they are here for blood

I
Am
Nothing
But it is
Wonderful

Your fathers teeth are
An alabaster white
Despite the nights you hear him retching in the bathroom
It makes you sick
It makes me sick
What makes him sick is the alcohol and the one Mirror in the house whose reflections won’t stop laughing

I
Am
Nothing
And I am having a hell of a time

The railroad track beside your apartment keeps knocking books off your shelf
Books you never remember buying whose pages are a deep purple and the writing seems not quite Greek, not quite Cyrillic, and not quite human
When you try putting them back on the shelf they catch fire
And the next day your boss asks you about the strange tattoo on the back of your neck that wasn’t there yesterday
And won’t be tomorrow

I
Am
Nothing
All these words sound the same

You found it in an abandoned building
In the middle of an old growth forest
The buildings walls were covered in blood and concrete
And the object is always warm, sounds like it’s humming, and is covered in strange markings
You are excited and afraid of what will happen next
But what will actually happen is the worst of all
Absolutely
nothing
The greatest curse of a life uninterrupted and uninteresting

I
Am
Nothing
But I must be everything

Rocks from the gravel road jab through my converse
As I do figure 8s through fields of black eyed Susan’s and purple flowers whose names I do not know
My eyes meet dark forests full of old trash
Beer cans and water bottles
Or they witness bees butterflies and dragonflies
It’s these moments that make me understand this music even more
Because in my mind it produces pictures of wheat fields and Pacific Northwestern forests
Montana mountains and maybe a ship just barely on the horizon
It’s these moments I exist outside of ideology and struggle
Outside of theory and praxis
Bushes instead of barricades
Grass brushing against my feet instead of city concrete
It reminds me of other songs
Of old Kentucky Anarchists
Of bread and roses
I am always so hesitant to leave these fields and forests
Because while I’m there I don’t have to say a thing to or for anyone
I don’t have anywhere to be except there
And no one to impress or disappoint
So I trade my Bella Ciaos for “3 a.m.”s
Freedom in theory for freedom in actuality
No matter how fleeting
And then
When I feel the time is right
I simply go back home

I think I’m like a firecracker
Just less impressive
In a moment I can explode into a creative fervor
But it only lasts for a moment
And I’m left lighting more and more matches hoping that the ashes will spark and take flame

I guess I’m waiting for that big moment
Where the whole truth is clear and everything changes
That big moment will be my big moment
But the problem with this waiting is you miss all the little moments in between
The little moments that give the big one context if not meaning
You can’t be a movement if you’re always standing still

The chasm between thought and action is wide
And although I tell myself I can make it, I never seem to have the energy to make it across
Or is it simply that I’m never sure if I honestly intended to try

Tonight the sky is a dark grey
It rained all up to this point and you can still see some collected puddles on the ground
But the temperature is perfect
Except for the breeze you can’t tell where the air ends and your skin begins
I hope the beach is like this
I wish it could always be like this