I am thankful for the mountains
I am thankful for the music that comes from the mountains
I am thankful for every fire that is lit by nothing more than the embers of a fire that raged before it
Only these fires can truly comprehend what it is like to suffer and be born again
I am thankful for the knowledge that every human being has in them a true spark
Only some don't care or are too busy
Or let their dreams be squashed or didn't have the fuel to burn in the first place
I am thankful for the holy beat poets
Kerouac and Ginsberg
I am thankful for the poet saints
Rimbaud and Lorca
And I am thankful for my saints of folk music
Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie shaped me long before any of this
But all in all I am thankful for the holy ghost of Carl Sandburg
Without him I would not be writing this poem or any
I am thankful that these poems allow me to say what I need to
I don't expect my words to be recited at weddings or funerals
But I don't mind because both atmospheres depress me just the same
I am thankful for every trail I have walked
I am thankful for every breath of Rocky or Appalachian air ever to enter my tragic lungs
I am thankful for the bonfires I have lit
I am thankful for the sticks that snap in my hands and leave scrapes that bleed only enough to remind me that I'm alive
I do not need such reminders but it's always a nice thing to have
I am thankful for every lost love
Whether I disappointed them or ****** them off is no matter
All that matters is that there is humility
I am thankful for the fact that these lost loves are leading
Completely happy lives with or without me
Knowing someone's happiness is dependent on me is a responsibility I cannot bear
I am thankful for this typewriter
It was my grandfather's when he was my age
He passed away two years ago on the week of Thanksgiving
He was born that week too
And it isn't pilgrims or stuffing that help me to feel thankful
It's the people like him

Almost a week has past
Since it was announced you will die
A day like that was always destined to come
But I am still not ready
Gordon Downie I want to write your eulogy now
And maybe you will see it
And understand how you've changed the life
Of this child of America

Gordon Downie you have made me scared
And if any sort of courage is going to come
Let it come now
I can't think of a worse time than this
Why must all my heroes leave me here?
But I understand that before a person becomes a saint they must perform miracles after their death

The three words I would use to describe you, you already know
Gordie you are a man
A machine
And a poem
The first song I remember learning how to sing, you beckoned me in from the wicked prairie winds  
And now I just hope that when I hear the news of the final words I smile
And it will be fine
But Gordie
I have avoided all the trends and clichés a young man of 20 can
I have sat in parking lots and coffee shops and witnessed beautiful things continuing as long as this world will let them

But it is you who has traveled to the hundredth meridian
The man who can get behind anything
The man who stood neck deep in the lake and yelled "you are not the ocean" and refused to swim
I learned that I must be ready to live my life because we get no dress rehearsals
I learned to be honest with who I am because no one's interested in the things I didn't do

Gordon Downie you are the machine that powered my childhood so this poem is for you
And when you die Heaven will truly be a better place
And one day I will meet you there
But until then
I will go to Bobcaygeon
And watch those constellations
Reveal themselves
One star
At a time

Close your eyes now and you can see it
A quietly flowing stream
The sunlight through tree limbs
You are in the mountains again, if only in your mind
And if only for a moment

Time and time again I would think about it
And other times I would write about it
I’m in a cabin in the woods alone and nobody knows and I’ll come back to civilization when I want to if I ever want to again
I will grow what I need or steal it if I have to
That’s my dream I guess
The kind of solitude that drove Kerouac to Big Sur
“Something good will come of all things yet”
He whispered to me
“Golden and eternal just like that”
That’s the dream I hope to wake up to
But for now I wake up to closed curtains and toilets that won’t flush properly and all the weight I have gained since high school
I’m a wanderer but not in the way I hoped
I wonder down aisles at work
I wander back and forth from my living room to my bedroom
And my mind wanders every moment
The words that leave my mouth are never what they were in my head
I wonder if anyone takes me seriously
And sometimes I’m afraid to write it because I don’t want anyone I know throwing back any validation I don’t need
I’m a **** good man but I sure as hell ain’t happy
Happiness is so fleeting regardless
I’m not happy but I am content
Let that be my concern
Don’t fret over me
And don’t remind me who I am or tell me what I do
I know that
I live that
Let me talk **** about myself if I want to
Let me pat my own back by myself
If I need I’ll ask
Just give me the space I need
To introduce myself
Give it Time
You’ll understand

Close your eyes now and you can see it
A quietly flowing stream
The sunlight through tree limbs
You are in the mountains again, if only in your mind
And if only for a moment

There are railroad tracks
That run through my town
And at night when I finally receive
The silence I wished for during the day
I can hear the faint whistle
And hum against my bedroom windows
I hear the whistle now.

All my life I have heard the trains
And I find beauty in the fact that even when I'm not listening, they are there
The trains carrying coal, chemicals, lumber, and the better parts of my childhood
As a child I loved the idea of the caboose
Allowing any stretch of rail
Any length of land
To be your home
Your bed
And it was probably through this my wanderer spirit grew.

All my life these trains meant something
Escape
But not without possibility of return
I romanticized the long web of rails connecting all the land and Souls in the American night
I have always loved such pieces of antiquity

So in the latter years of my childhood in high school it's no suprise the love I had for Steinbeck, Sandburg, and Woody Guthrie
I would lament to friends that the trains became too fast to hop, but I never tried
I always sat back and watched
Or listened on quiet nights

Now my childhood has passed
I am nearly 20 but wrapped in my head is the idea that the young boy who had train posters and pictures covering his walls was nothing but a stranger or a character in just another awful coming of age rerun
But deep down that child turned to Ginsberg who wrote of boxcars boxcars boxcars
And Kerouac who followed the long stretches of road to the western edge of America
And it was through Kerouac I found
Thomas Wolfe

I feel I have Thomas Wolfe in my bones
Thomas Wolfe who left home rejoicing train rides to the North
Then realized he couldn't go home again
Thomas Wolfe who never wrote a bad train scene
Not all of Wolfe is in me
Not the 1900s Southern prejudice
Or the raving accusing of friends of great treasons, only to have to apologize the morning after
But I can feel his need
To write all I can
To never take away
To add add
To never reduce because who tells Van Gogh "yes yer paintings alright but I need you to reduce the amount of stars by 30 and I expect it on my desk Monday"
I won't take anything away from myself
Only add
So at nights
When I hear the train whistle
And soft rattling on my window
Thomas Wolfe is with me
And he loves the sound too

99% of Americans don't know
That penguins run the world
That's why they all wear suits
Because world *******
Requires a dress code
Yeah it may look silly
To see a penguin waddle around
But have you ever seen
Black Friday stampedes
And midnight premiere lines

Our penguin overlords are benevolent
If they wanted we'd all be gone
Or forced to work in their egg warming factories
And they keep operations where it's cold
Because they know we like where it's warm
And they keep an eye on us from our zoos

I've been to the zoo in Columbus
I've seen how those penguins watch us
I know they are in control
1% of Americans know
That penguins rule the world
And now that you've read this,
That makes 2%

She said her name was Sky
Or at least that is what I think she said
When we were asked to turn to those around us
And to shake hands and say good morning
I thought it was a beautiful name
And I have thought of it since Sunday

I saw her first when I walked in the door
She wasn't the first face I saw
But she is the first face I remember
Now that isn't entirely true
Because if I was asked today to pick her out of a crowd I may not be able to
I am a nervous man at times
I did not stare at her
I didn't even look long enough to take in the intricacies of her identity
We made eye contact
I nodded in greeting as I always do and continued walking
I can remember the coat she wore was purple
And I didn't know she would sit two seats down from me
And I didn't know I would become entranced by the thought of her

I fear that I fall more in love with the idea of a stranger
Than I would once I know them
I feel that I am a dreamer at times
Though I would never admit it
I know however I won't die lonely
Though not without its bite,
Lonliness isn't that strong to me
I don't think much of it

She said her name was Sky
And in my nervousness I only said
Good morning
And I hope I see her again

When you ask the right question and get the answer you hoped wouldn't come
When you find the truth and it's what you wished you'd never see
You can feel it in the back of your mind
The tension
That feeling in your head that things aren't what you thought and they probably never were
It's something you gotta sweat out before it clogs up your brain and your heart
All learning is alleviation of tension
All decisions too
You can't run from it and you shouldn't want to
In dialectics you have thesis, antithesis, and synthesis
What is, why it shouldn't, and what must come next

I promise that I'll never come to a final conclusion about what Anarchism really means
Because anarchy means standing up for your neighbors
Anarchy means letting the people you care about have the choice to not have you in their life
Anarchy means embracing what you love even when it kills you
And maybe it's up to me to make each day worth living
To get out of bed and have a good reason for doing so
Because some of us have to carry the baggage of being awake each day
And some of us live their days painfully sober carrying the pain of emotions unhindered
But the pain I feel now is as meaningless as the imaginary lines that separate countries or the flags that fly over them
My pain is meaningless compared to the knowledge I stepped back so that you could live life according to what you want
Because being an anarchist means living life in accordance to what you think
And that's always been hard for me
For once I knew exactly what I wanted
But I also knew deep down you weren't ever as sure as I was
And here we return to the tension
The tension that has kept me up a few nights and forced be to go on long walks until my feet hurt instead of my heart
The tension that left me feeling like nothing, but not in the way Max Stirner intended it
So instead of hiding this tension or letting it eat away at me like so many times before
I have to live according to what I think
So we have the thesis: looking for stars through a wall of clouds and the hope I had in my heart
The antithesis: uncertainty and a sentimental past two steps ahead of me
The synthesis: Realizing that I need to let you go

You hear everything in a small town
Kids losing their innocence
In the backs of dusty cars
In Kroger parking lots
Or losing their sanity
In their brothers rooms
When their brothers are away

You hear the tales of all
The trials and failures
The madness
The complexities
Men breaking under the pressure of the world
And locking themselves inside with guns
Only to be in custody an hour later
   No knowledge can elude a small town

Blessed be that small town
Everyone loves to hate
They all try to escape
But the beauty of a small town
Is it lives inside of you
And if you are lucky
If you leave that small town
The hole it leaves grows
Like a **** on a tree when the branch is severed



I feel I am not made for this small town
Everybody knows Everybody
I only know a few
I imagine skipping town
Hopping the freight train,
Whose tracks run through my town,
Putting my destiny in the hands
Of long dead civil engineers

I dream of Holy Cities by the ocean
Exotic lands for miles
With steeples so numerous
Like Heaven’s bed of nails

But the more I think I realize
Everywhere is a Small Town
Dayton is a Small Town
Chicago is a Small Town
Denver is a Small Town
This whole spinning rock is a Small Town
In a Small Town solar system
And I feel trapped

You hear everything in a small town
Who was cheated
Who is lovely
Who is holy
Who is lonely
I just sit and listen
Far from the dusty cars
Far from the brothers rooms
Far from the red beating heart
Of the small town
Where I am

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

The First World War destroyed anything beautiful that existed within the human spirit
You cannot simply walk away from industrial mass slaughter unaltered
You cannot hide it behind decades later mass slaughters of equal importance
You cannot hide behind getting excited for next mass slaughter
WW1 may have been the force that killed anyone’s feelings of honor or bravery in war
And that’s almost as great a tragedy as all the bloodlines severed
War and violence and conflict will always be with us
It is deep within all animal DNA and no matter how many daisies are put into the barrels of rifles you will never escape it
There is a great tragedy to violence but at times there is a beauty and there is a necessity
When the Soviet forces finally breached the walls of the Führerbunker
Don’t you think they were smiling?
Reality is never black and white
It is shades of tragedy, shame, beauty, and glory

It may be seen as “Eurocentric” of me, among other things, to carry WW1 with this weight
It was not a purely European conflict of course, but the main theater was
Besides, I am descended from Europeans, and some nights when all is silent I wonder if I can hear my ancestors weeping
Or are they screaming?
We as a species have allowed our greatest inheritance to be squandered
Pure wild nature
We have sold it for same Starbucks coffee shop in every college town, Kroger, and corner of New York City
We sold the forests for New York City
Are some sins unforgivable?
In the place of the old growths we build buildings of subjective beauty
Subjective beauty always bows to objective beauty
Yes, there is objective beauty
Buildings that are built in the Brutalist style are subjectively beautiful
Forests, undeveloped fields of flowers, the rushing flow of a river
THESE ARE THINGS OF OBJECTIVE BEAUTY
To argue otherwise makes you a liar or a coward

Unironic nihilists have none of my respect
They simply do not deserve it
If you want to be taken seriously find something greater than yourself
Something outside yourself
Something that came before you, exists above you, and will be there long after you are not
That’s why I chose God and Nature
Some see these as interchangeable
I do not but I’m not here to split hairs
The problem with modern society is we have become ironic nihilists, which is almost as bad
Everything becomes chalked up to subjectivity
We crack jokes about how it’s all meaningless and eventually down the line we believe it
This is a pathetic cope
The meaning of our lives, like the objectively beauty of nature, has been bought or stolen
You were not born to consume product
You were not born to work and make things of cheap plastic
You were not born to enjoy next superhero movie, twice a year, every year, until you die
To our ancestors our lives now must seem like decades long suicide pacts
I want out of this state of unliving
We were born to be physically strong
We were born to create things of beauty
We were born to meet hardships, embrace conflict, overcome them, conquer them become something superior to what you once were
YOU WERE BORN TO BE ALIVE
CREATE THE MEANING IN YOUR LIFE IF YOU HAVE TO
Just please
Don’t be a nihilist

I try to take my multivitamin and multi mineral vitamin every single morning
Maybe a fish oil pill or two throughout the day
I have become consumed with the idea of getting more sun on my skin
I have been consumed with the idea of improving my gut bacteria
I want to talk about these things without sounding like Patrick Bateman
To improve your inner flora it is recommended you replace processed and fried foods with sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, or something along those lines
I know sunshine and sauerkraut aren’t going to fix your depression or rid you of your years of trauma
But there’s no shame in trying
On Friday I bought a full 16oz jar of kimchi and proceeded to eat the entire thing in less than 24 hours
I will never apologize
I will never feel shame

I scream all of these things into a bathroom mirror when I am alone
I wrote this poem for myself
I wrote it for all of you
I want out of this soul crushing alienating techno industrial hellscape
I want the nightmare to end but I’m in too deep
If I melt down my cell phone, crash my car into an empty Wendy’s, and make it my moral and ethical duty to take down the power grid, I may get expelled from grad school
I might get arrested
I might just be forgotten
So for sake of legality I cannot endorse looking up how a cheap bandsaw can cut down a cell tower
I do no endorse bringing the technological nightmare to its knees for the good of all living things
I do not endorse arson, even when no one gets hurt
It’s a mean world out there
I only endorse breaking free
Any way you can

I often write my poems too fast
And the emotion gets passed by
In a rush to be finished
I gotta remember
I'm not Jack
I can't write on a continuous scroll
In a Benzedrine blur

I wish I could read my poems
With a jazz backing band
I keep a terrible rhythm alone
And when I'm in my car
Listening to Thelonious Monk,
The Jazz King of my heart,
My voice has this growl of feeling
But when I'm on that stage
With the mic staring back at me
I hesitate
It doesn't come out right
It doesn't sound like I rehearsed it
In my bed late at night
Or on those countless car trips

Oh I wish I could take that car
Gun it down an empty highway
Windows down
Air rushing in
And the Miles Davis trumpet
Screaming for me to go
Go
Go

I want to write about more
Than just how I'm feeling
My hero Woody Guthrie said
"All you can write
Is what you see"
But I've spent too much time
Looking in the mirror
When I should be looking out the window
But the window reveals my reflection all the same
I can never truly escape my self
But still I write

I know they are in me
The true holy poems
And maybe they won't be howling
And maybe they will never have been to Chicago
And maybe they don't know any Rimbaud or Garcia Lorca
And maybe they can't sing the blues
But when it is all said and done
No matter what they are
They're all I've got
And you can never hate something like that

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

"Overlook San Antonio Riverwalk"
A line I wrote
In quiet inspiration.
Now memories flood through
In a dreary Ohio night

I see the winding Riverwalk
In the corners of my mind
These memories are quick & scarce
Unable to reach full maturation

Young notebook in which I write
I trust in you to allow my
Thoughts to flow
And I will overlook
San Antonio Riverwalks
Of the mind
Till I return again

Such powerful emotions on a Monday morning
Becoming nostalgic to music I don't listen to
Remembering the girl that was my angel
But has since become angelic no longer
I feel wide awake in a sleepless generation
I feel lost in a generation where there is new meaning in finding oneself

At 10:08 am you don't truly comprehend how much you actually slept
My eyes are heavy though I have been awake for hours
At 10:09 am you think to remind yourself that you aren't the only soul experiencing a downward spiral
The only true crime in America is getting caught
The only true sin in America is minding your own business
But if your skin is light enough and your list of friends is big enough then ****** you can get away with anything

I have never been so angry with my personal life that I've punched a wall
I have yet to be so angry with the political world that I've thrown a brick through a window
But somewhere in America walls are being punched and bricks are being thrown and God bless all the punchers and throwers
Yes you say there are "better ways of dealing with your emotions"
But your treatment plan doesn't work for everyone
Some people meditate to deal with stress
Others make holes in dry wall and from what I have heard both ways work

I ask myself at 10:14 if I really want to get romantic love again
Probably not I tell myself
At least not soon
Romantic love and ****** love are mostly lost on me and I turn my love to friends, family, and animals like the birds outside my window
And when I say I love America I don't mean the government
In America we draw too thin of a line between protest and disrespect
Politics is always violent because people are violent
And you can't change the natural tendency people anymore than you can change the rotation of the earth

So next time you get so frustrated with the lack of justice, compassion or another buzz word that goes with being a decent person
And there is nothing better for you to do than punch a wall
Think of me
Because no matter what
I'm rooting for you

I saw the ghost of Jack Kerouac
Walking an empty highway at night
I walked with the ghost of Carl Sandburg
In the ancient streets of Charleston
I sang with the ghost of Woody Guthrie
Along Rocky Mountain trials, through Yellowstone
I played music with the ghost of Pete Seeger
On my guitar, around a campfire
I read the words of my poems with the ghost of Allen Ginsberg
Quietly, in the dark, alone in an empty room

I’m leaving today
On this San Antonio Highway
While San Antonio jazz
Oozes through the speakers
Of this big blue Subaru

I-35 N to Austin
Destination Texarkana
And in two days’ time
July 15th 2015
I will be back home
To the humid Ohio weather

Ohio is covered in rain
But on this San Antonio Highway
The sky is dark and the ground is dry
And Louis Armstrong sings away

Nine years later
Would I rather not have met you?
Seven years later
Would I rather not have fallen in love?
Six years later
Are second chances worth giving?
One year later
Fool me three times and I am a joke

I am not the ghost I thought I was
You are the ghost instead
Ghost that runs in my veins
Ghost that still inhabits my dreams
Ghost I often think about
I need to lay your ghost to rest

Because now you are happy
Now you are whole
I am the one who sulks in darkness and hates their own reflection
I am he who writes about time that passes and love that fades
I am the deathly cliché of a boy who once  loved a girl and now is nothing more than a phantom
What difference is there between the phantom I have become and the ghost you are to me?
Can I exorcise these spirits?
Can my conscious return to solid form?
What chains do I rattle except for those I forged with my own bad timing my own poor choices and my own disillusion?

I must lay your ghost to rest before it kills me
But I can't bring myself to do it
In quiet moments I bridge our past failures to future hopes and my present becomes limbo
I can barely look people in the eye anymore
I avoid it so they can't see that I am never truly there
I made you this ghost in my mind
You and I made me a phantom
You won't forgive me and that's ok
I can't forget you
And I will have to learn
How to make it work
Ghosts are only as real as your willingness to let them into your mind
The door has long been open
And you are always welcome in

I won't write a letter to some president
Whoever they may be
Because if they ever truly wanted freedom
They would tear down the fences
And make the White House a shelter for the  homeless  
Or they would fill all the empty houses on my street
And every other empty house on every other street with empty houses
If there is something I've learned from 21 years
Is that its the common people who make the real change in this world
It's the common people who build the world for all to life in
For me this started at Peekskill
When 20 thousand men and women
formed a wall so Paul Robeson could sing safe from harm
Then I learned of Spain in the 30s
From the Asturian miners to the Catalan anarchists
The guns that protected Madrid and thousands of voices singing A Las Barricadas and No Pasarán
And some nights I whisper a curse for every bomb that struck Guernica
Meanwhile in West Virginia common people fought for equality at Harper's Ferry and for the rights of the workers at Blair Mountain
And even today in southern Mexico, it's the common people who are creating Zapata's great dream of a world where land belongs to those who work it
The people of this world are capable of such beautiful things
All the dollars in all the banks can't buy out the human spirit
And all the bullets in all the guns can't lessen the strength of us all standing together
And just as a wise man once said:
"We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute."

Allen what happened to the America you used to inhabit?
What happened to the America that raised you to be an angel?
Allen why are the bison in hiding?
When will we ask Cuba for it's forgiveness?
I am sentimental about Cuba and I am sentimental about America

They used to say the American Dream was a green light on a dock at the other end of the lake
Now they tell us that light is actually swamp gas, a trick of the eye, the moon reflecting off the water
And we are left to search for the American Dream at the wheel of a Cadillac in a haze of drugs among the ruins of Vegas

Allen when will we hear from you again?
Allen you would not believe what has happened to love in America
Love has become too serious
Too calculated
Too intentional
Allen wasn't your love accidental?
Didn't it possess mistakes?
Love is ceremoniously scripted
Downright mechanical
An exhibition of State sanctioned sincerity

Allen please give my regards to Burroughs
The space program is closed to the astronauts
We need to get serious about space travel
America has become silly when it needs to be serious and serious when it needs to be silly
This election is a joke and we are dying not laughing

Allen we are fighting wars across the oceans with drones it's sinister
Every general is now an armchair general
They say they bombed a hospital by accident
Allen I'm afraid of what they do on purpose

Allen I feel like giving up on America
The golden valleys have been melted down for the false teeth of millionaires
The highways full or diamonds have been dug up and the diamonds sit in vaults with diamonds bought with blood
Allen you and I are too sensitive for what America has become
Allen I need you now more than ever
Please write back soon
Yours truly

I am a simple soul
When I die I want to be remembered fondly as a pretty decent poet
I don't want fanfare
But if I receive it I won't complain
Most of all I want to be remembered
My greatest fear is that everything I am and everything I have ever done will be reduced to a forgotten blip in the back of someone's mind
How I so much wish I had the power and strength to start fires I have no intention of putting out
My greatest philosophy is that a majority of people who do evil know **** well what they are doing, they just don't care
And enough of them can get away with it to inspire the next generation
Let me inspire a generation that won't allow evil to be done and go unpunished
Leniency towards evil is a joke that stopped being funny long before now
It never really was funny to start out with
Sometimes I catch myself thinking of all the rocks thrown at Peekskill and how they got away with it
I think of the four dead in Ohio
Even now I think of Sacco and Vanzetti and cry

I am a simple soul
I only wish that you remember those that came before us and sacrificed everything they had
And then I hope you think of me

What in this world can I understand but me?
Whose pain is this if not mine?
Whose voice is this if not mine?
All I can ever be is my Self
All I can ever truly know is me and mine
I'm trapped in the chains of my own Ego and I know **** well that those chains are ones you can't shake off
Max Stirner you tell me I should only act in my self interest
You tell me that all things are my property if I exert my will over them
But you don't know a **** thing about me Max
How many hells would I create for the people I know if I exerted that will?
You must have had the luxury to not have anger like mine
You must have not ever experienced the fire in the back of your mind and the bricks in the pit of your stomach when life throws you for a loop
You don't know how bitter I can become
Your egoism would be poison in my blood

Max I look into the mirror and wonder if that's you I see
Hiding in my mind behind my irises peering back and laughing
I have such distaste for the things you preach but why am I so fixated on letting the world know that?
And suddenly it's all clear
Max Stirner you are my shadow
You are everything about myself that I cannot accept
You are every clenched fist at the thought of someone I love loving someone else
You are every scowl on my face when I feel like I'm surrounded by people who don't give a **** about what I have to say
You are every night I stewed in my own mind because nothing went how I wanted

I want to be rid of my ego
I want to live a life where I'm never in the way of anyone pursuing what they want
So what do I do now?
Because maybe you aren't entirely wrong Max
I am free when I take responsibility for my actions it's true
Do I want to be a good man because it is in my self interest to do so?
And is love nothing but a ghost of my mind?
A spectre that disappears as soon as I reach my hand out to it
They tell me love is just a bunch of chemicals in my brain anyway
But ****** it's my brain and it's my chemicals
They are mine and so my property

So Max, we'll never agree in our anarchism
At the end of the day I believe in causes and powers bigger than my ego
But I have a respect for your beliefs
Because I know all too well
All I can ever be is me
All I can ever understand is my self

Each death of another year
Brings lives lived in higher resolutions
This next year I promise to
Finally embrace my dreaming madman
Let my ears ringing be a sign that I need to listen up and maybe even calm my mind more
Stop expecting some grand vision to reveal itself and to keep reminding myself that hallucinations are not something I really want
I promise to sit my *** down and write when a poem comes to mind
Not days after where my mind turns to a rusty endless machine of impossible gears that serve no purpose but to clank together and make useless sparks
I will nevermore worry myself that what I have to say doesn't matter in the long run and that my speaking up doesn't always take the spotlight from those who deserve and need it
I will continue to resist being some tragic Faustian punk
I will remember that some things I can not ever begin to understand and just because I love someone that doesn't mean they have any obligation to love me back and that's ok
I will acknowledge that not everyone "gets" what I'm trying to get at and that's fine too
I will write some poems that rhyme ******
And I will probably  cut down on swearing
And I may even cut down on soda or whatever you want to call it, but I won't tell anyone whether that is followed or not
I resolve in the coming year to breathe in and breathe out the beauty of the world around me and surround myself with whoever cares enough to ask me who I really am
I am going to let everyone know who I am respectfully regardless etc etc
I will be honest with my shortcomings, my defeats, my family, and anyone else who asks
I will finally learn the names of all my coworkers
And in this coming year I will finally tap into the holy poet Saint Daniel Robinson that I know lives and sleeps deep down in the disaffected hermit *** Daniel I feel I am today

I can feel the air beginning its chill
Fall is upon us while old man winter waits in the wings for his spotlight
Holy October
A year since I first kissed your cheek with a poem
Kerouac's October
Your nights remind me of my ghost
Ghost of my past love that comes in cigarette smoke
Cigarette smoke I watched on a back porch that wasn't mine
Smoke like memory that floats away in whisps
I spit the regrets out with saliva and turn my attention to better paths
October I will write you a song
More beautiful than a spiritual hymn
And more powerful than a folk ballad

I have dreams of living alone
In an old shack
Surrounded by the peaks of Montana mountains
I sit on a porch playing guitar and watch tall grass blowing in the wind
Everything is as beautiful as I know it can be
There is no pain here
Maybe that is my heaven and I have to wait
If that's the case I don't  mind
Maybe that's my idea of freedom
Freedom is a word that always eludes me
Freedom to me is never being held back
Freedom is good company
And sometimes freedom is silence

Oh October evening
I am 20 years old
My bones are young but my heart feels much older
Give me gentle Montana plains
Quiet Virginian forests
The waves hitting Carolina shores
October I hope you love me as I love you
It's been hard for me to love lately
But October you are anything but cruel
You understand
October I'm glad to see you again

The noisy clothes dryer has made me fall back in love with the quiet
Now even the hum of the air conditioner is painfully noticeable
And the ticking of the analog clocks scratch at my brain until I retreat somewhere anywhere else

There are ants on my bathroom floor but I try not to notice them
They don’t bug me all that much and I don’t really want to see them killed
Maybe it’s the wilderness reclaiming my lower middle class suburban home

I’m getting better at walking in the woods with my headphones off
While the words of some green anarchist or social ecologist compliment well with the feeling of dirt and branches beneath my boots
Sometimes it’s nice to hear the birds or the footsteps of some unknown animal at other side of this wall of brush and bushes

There are many days now where I want to escape from the modern world
Maybe if only for a little while
In countless poems past I threaten cabins in the woods
I threaten retreat from society
I threaten quote “primitive” technology
I threaten an escape I’m afraid to make
And often I’m afraid to say all this
For fear of being compared to Ted Kaczynski
So for now I’ll just search for the quiet
Far from everyday life
And then...

And in these dreary dreadful
Days of January
I often fear that
Whatever fire or passion
That possessed me to write in the preceding months
Is leaving me
I know not how or why
But with everyday that passes it feels as if the fire is burning itself out

But my friends,
Blame it on the weather!
Blame it on the damp and dark and freezing chill
Blame it on the on the news of deaths and the presence of tears
But if you want something to believe, believe in this:
That **** fire won't burn out

Save your Phoenix symbolisms for another day
A Phoenix is born again from its own ashes
And in my heart there will be no ashes
Because this **** fire won't burn out

It's fine to stop singing when your voice cracks and your throat burns but that's no excuse to lose the tune
So when your voice is healed stand your ground and belt out your song
For that fire won't burn out

Then embrace the weather
Embrace the damp the dark and the freezing chill
Embrace the dreary dreadful
Days of January
Where you fear the fire inside flickers and fades
There is nothing controlling that fire but you
And if you have the patience to think and the paper to write
Your fire won't go out

My love is like an old stubborn dog
It's tired and sick and sits around all day
But dogs are know for being loyal and sometimes that's all I can offer
The problem with this love is it still has many tricks to learn and I promise to be a good student
But you gotta be patient because this old dog gets wrapped up too much in its own self pity to know better half the time and if it gets too mopey it doesn't know what to do with itself
But even dogs in their eldest years need the love of any of those young scrappy puppies that go running around ******* on the carpet
My love does not **** on carpets
And neither do I

But there is something you must understand
If things go south and we split
If I leave, this old love isn't going to follow
For better or worse this love is yours
It belongs to you
I can't take it back, no matter how I try
You can do what you want with it
You can put it in the back room of your mind and forget the key
It will sit and it will stay exactly where you leave it
But nothing that happens and no mater how bad you treat it,
With you it will remain
So if you are going to come looking for love in my heart come prepared
And please be gentle

Don't get me wrong or let the wrong picture be painted
There is plenty in this mad day and night world to be romantic about
But the total collection of my generation gets too romantic to me
This generation isn't even how I pictured it
What happened to the rucksack revolution
The Gary Snyder dharma bums criss crossing the United States with thumbs outstretched, hoping freights and carrying their whole lives on their backs
That is something I get romantic about
Was it really that hard?
Or was it simply easier to stay at home to watch daytime television or evening television or whenever the hell you watch television
I admit I watch television too
And it's certainly no means to an end
But there is gotta be more to this crazy life than that
I don't feel romantic like my generation does
My generation rarely feels romantic about jazz
Jazz is some of the most unapologetic music I can stomach
You will never hear a jazz song that doesn't breathe into your soul
I am getting tired of your romantics
I am tired of feeling like I have to live my life by pouring deep love emotions from the well of my heart into another human heart
Half the time I want to love the whole world
The other half I want the world to leave me to sit and sulk in peace
If you want, ask the two that I've dated
One may not remember but ask anyway
Ask them if I was ever romantic
Ask them what it looked like
Ask them how it felt
Understand that I am the great black sheep of romantic expression
Understand that there is hope even when there isn't romance
Understand that there is hope in every beat of our silly human hearts and every flicker of an eyelid and finally understand that even if someone says they don't feel romantic about one thing or the next, understand that doesn't mean that they don't feel love
Love and romance are all just silly words we give to what goes on deep down inside where we can never see but can always feel

May comes with all the showers who, like me, have slept in through April
They hurriedly empty themselves on the dry earth while flowers sit quietly beneath topsoil
My eyes are brown like the topsoil
Patiently waiting for flowers to bloom forth
All of my friends like flowers
And I sit and wonder if I have failed to appreciate the tulips and carnations and black eyed Susan's I have seen
And I wonder what May showers bring

It's quiet now
Deep into the morning and I'm still wide awake
I spent the whole day day-dreaming instead of living it
But that's a problem I have had for awhile now
I'm letting my life pass by before my eyes
Eyes that are like windows and if you look close enough you can just barely see a sign that says "out for lunch" or something along those lines
And the clock on the sign is without hands so you can't tell if I only just left for if I have been gone for 2 or 21 years

Every poem I have been writing has sounded the same
I need help
I need to get out of this purgatory
Either I can't write or I can't help but write the same circles endlessly
I need bolts of lighting
I need a John Brown fiery passion and a thousand tons of gunpowder to blast me out of this ******* rut I'm in
I need Kerouac's railroad earth
I need something I haven't had in a long time
Maybe it's love
Maybe it's hope
Maybe it's a sunflower growing somewhere
So maybe I just need to welcome a few more May showers
And then let the flowers grow

Tides of change are like the tides of the ocean
Tides of the ocean I watched on an island off the coast of Charleston SC
Cemented in my childhood memories as a scene of holy simplicity

And like the ocean, these tides can bring forth
Great waves of progress
Hunter Thompson speaks of the great San Francisco wave of the 60s, and how it surged, raged, but could not make the journey farther than they peyote nightmares of Vegas

And still in dreams at night I hear Woody Guthrie singing how there's "a better world a-coming"
If you listen closely
In the alleys around trashcan fires
Or in the last of the occupied boxcars
You can hear the same thing
It's coming
It's coming

Yet tides come in and then recede back
And in the roar of the ocean I could hear it telling me to be calm
The better world is coming
But there is still much more time to wait
I don't like to be a pessimist about such things
But all one generation can do is reap and learn the last generations harvest,
And then go and plant their own

In these reflections I realize why I can't write exactly how I feel about politics or progress
I am not a warrior
I am not a brick thrower or speech giver, though both have necessity in their own respect
Like Hunter and Woody
I am a teller of stories and presenter of truth and life
I can spend endless nights and days writing of experiences
But the future is beyond my grasp

Yet when the times come
When blood is spilt and windows shatter
I will be there
I will experience every moment
And I won't let the effort be forgotten or in vain
For the tides come in
Then go back again

There will come a time when you must go to the river
The only road that can take you there is the fastest lane you can find
Do not be surprised if the music drowns out your thoughts
Accept it
Because when you go to the river you must empty yourself of everything else

When you get to the river you can pray if you want to
Or meditate
Or contemplate universal truths
Or scream at the music that blares from the open doors of Kentucky clubs
All that matters is where you are
When you get to the river pile the rocks by the bank so no one can deny you of this experience
Hold the rocks in your hand and feel each and every crevice
The texture of the stone is a memorial for all who did not make it back from the waters
Remember that every river is one
All rivers are holy
The water hitting the shore is a hymn of death and life and all earthly eternity so listen closely and carefully
Then sing your hymns to the geese and the ghosts and the monsters in the river
Understand why you made this pilgrimage

Remember that eventually you must leave the river
Remember where their car is parked
Remember who you are
On the way home don't take the highway
The highway is only so you can get to the river as fast as possible
Home can wait
Remember the day before
Remember how Allen Ginsberg sent you his answer in the form towers of water that everyone but you could see and know in your heart there is no answer more fitting than that
You will eventually get back to your own car
You will drive to your house basking in violet light
Sing every word you remember from your childhood
Take the long way into town
Get as lost as you will allow yourself and never too lost to find your way back
Do not worry about that river
The river will be there when you are ready to return

What melancholy nights
We experience in the towns we call home
Kerouac's Holy October is over
And November hangs on the lips and minds
Of the denizens of
Autumn Earth

And when will I become the
Angel-Headed Hipster
I convinced myself
I was prophesied to be
Hipsters who bury themselves in the acoustic blues
Of coffee shops
Or are baptized by words
In bars on Sunday nights

Why would Carl Solomon
Ever leave Rockland
If he's promised never to be alone there?
And they say Neal Cassady died counting railroad tracks
And did he want to die counting railroad tracks?
And will I die counting railroad tracks too?

I so much want to emulate my heroes
I fear it will **** me
And if not a death of physicality
Then a death of mentality
Where I will cease to be
Me

But who wouldn't love of life
Of holy restlessness
Who wants to limit their scope to
A town
A city
A state
And when the only state I feel I can truly call home
Is Confusion
I want it to be for a good enough reason

And if I am to die in a state like this
Let me die counting railroad tracks
As melancholy days
Turn to melancholy nights

What in this world can I understand but me?
Whose pain is this if not mine?
Whose voice is this if not mine?
All I can ever be is my Self
All I can ever truly know is me and mine
I live in the shadow of my own Ego and I know **** well I cannot escape it
Max Stirner you tell me I should only act in my self interest
You tell me that all things are my property if only I reach out and take them
But do you know what it is I want Max?
You have never met me
I worry that what I want would be a hell for the people I care about
You must have had the luxury to not have anger like mine
You must have not ever experienced the fire in the back of your mind and the bricks in the pit of your stomach when life throws you for a loop
You don't know how bitter I can become
Can your egoism really help me?

Max I look into the mirror and wonder if that's you I see
Hiding in my mind behind my irises peering back
I had such distaste for the things you preach but why was I so fixated on letting the world know that?
And suddenly it's all clear
Max Stirner you are my shadow
You are everything about myself that I have trouble accepting
You are every clenched fist at the thought of someone I love loving someone else
You are every scowl on my face when I feel like I'm surrounded by people who don't give a **** about what I have to say
You are every night I stewed in my own mind because nothing went how I wanted

When I first wrote this poem,
I wanted to be rid of my ego
I want to live a life where I'm never in the way of anyone pursuing what they want
And I still do
So what do I do now?
Because you aren't entirely wrong Max
I am free when I take responsibility for my actions it's true
Maybe I am the unique one, the creative nothing, the indescribable qualities that make me who I am
And so is everyone else
And just because I say something is "mine" doesn't mean that it can't also be "ours"
Do I want to be a good man because it is in my self interest to do so?
Do I possess the tools to set myself free?
And is love nothing but a ghost of my mind?
A spectre that disappears as soon as I reach my hand out to it?
Do I love because it pleases me to do so?
They tell me love is just a bunch of chemicals in my brain anyway
But ****** it's my brain and it's my chemicals
They are mine
They are my property

So Max, we might not agree in our anarchism
At the end of the day I believe in causes and powers bigger than myself
But I have a respect for your beliefs
Because I know all too well
All I can ever be is me
All I can ever understand is my self

How much of the world is nothing more than what we experience?
William S Burroughs believed that everything you experience in your life you were meant to, that it was made for you
He wasn't very religious but in a way I am
He argues that every opinion is both subjective and objective
Because there is always an object, and a subject experiencing it
I'm sure, however, he was a better judge of art than I am

There is nothing more bittersweet than hearing the poetry of someone who you know is about to die
But here I am at nearly 1 am
Listening to your song

How much of the world has passed me by because I'm afraid to get my hands ***** or get my heartbroken?
I talk about our past creating who we are and then I spend months pushing no envelopes and not even stepping near a single line
How disappointed Hunter Thompson must be

I know I write a lot about dead men I idolize
Yet all the women in my life whom I love are living and although many of them have gone their separate paths in life I look fondly on every moment spent and know that no words I possess can describe them.
We are living in a world completely possessed by the human mind
And I promise to be more than along for the ride

I reached enlightenment going 75 on a highway on a summer night
No visions of Blake
Only spirits of Kerouac and Thelonious Monk beside me as I sat glued to the wheel
The psalms read as tail lights
The night smelt like memories of Boy Scout camp in the hills
I saw all of the kids of the American night as they should be
O holy angels
Fresh cut sunflower souls
Finding cute boys in Nashville or Indiana
Breathing in every ounce of childhood nostalgia with cigarette whispers
The only cigarettes I smoke are the secondhand whisps from close friends
The smell of cigarettes reminds me of lost love
No tears of Marx
Karl Marx is asleep tonight and all is quiet
Josef Stalin sits in an alley
Gut rot drunk and weeping
Somewhere in South America Trosky weeps through holes in his head the shape of ice picks
O American children
Drinking 100 proof distilled American passion
A stronger high than all the drugs I have never taken
A stronger kick than all the boots of the ones who won't put up with apathy any longer
Tonight we are the ones who are holy and crying
The chill of the night seeps into my bones and I shake with the earth and with drums and saxophone and everything sounds as it should
Paul Robeson my heart goes out to you wherever you are tonight
I stand watch so the skeletons of Babylon can throw stones at you no longer
The shattered glass reminds us the struggle isn't over
O American Angels listen to me ramble
I have sat in ecstasy and seen the smile of God and everything will turn out ok
Death comes when it has to
Don't rush it my friends
Until then raise whatever glasses you have as high as you can
Use the stones they throw to build your foundation
Kiss the ones you know in your heart to be holy
Don't worry how loud you are yelling
This is America and you don't have to be sorry
This is as beautiful as we allow it to be
This is as many tears as we can afford
Only saints cry on Thursdays
And tonight the wisdom of sages are written on bathroom stalls for whoever cares enough to read it
Bless everyone who sneezes
Don't  tell yourself that you aren't enough
Don't fool yourself that there is an enough
You are already as complete as you can be
You are the sunflower soul
You are enlightenment
Going 75
Down a highway
In the American night

This poem is a list of things I wish weren't true
This poem is meant to hold myself accountable
I'm just another sad white boy who plays guitar
Please do not trust me
I have a lot of trouble putting my convictions where my mouth is
Please don't take me seriously
I have never been able to defend what I believe
I can barely defend myself
In my heart I'm a idealistic anarchist
But my brain knows better
It knows that oppression doesn't disappear overnight
And it knows that when push comes to shove I won't be able to take the heat
I talk a big game
I talk all the time about raising some sort of hell
About taking a stand for the world I want to live in
But I've only ever been good at lying to myself
I'm not a saint and I won't be a martyr
I'm having a hard enough time being a decent person
I'm deathly afraid of what others think of me
I have trouble making eye contact
I have trouble knowing how to act around anybody

I just hope one day I can get ahold of myself
That one day I can finally help those who may need me
I can sit in a room and not feel like everyone is staring at me
One day I will be strong
One day I will be sincere
One day I will stop lying to myself that I am helpless to fix all my problems
That day I'll understand the truth when I see it
The words I will write and speak on stage won't feel so meaningless
I'll finally take my stand
That day will come

But for today
All I can do is be honest with myself
And remind myself to keep working
My revolution must start inside
A better future requires me to take responsibility for who I am
Because freedom without responsibility is at best meaningless and at worst dangerous
So I ask of you
Don't feel sorry for me
But don't judge me too harshly
Because I'm trying my hardest
There's a bright future in the back of my mind
And I intend to reach it
Anarchy means being honest with myself
And Anarchy means facing your fears and insecurities
And taking that step

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 can promise you that
I rarely cry at photographs
This is very new to me
But these tears are true
Just as your photos are true
Your photos are the true America
Thousands of photos
Of lives you only knew
I want to cover my house with your work
I want to imprint your photos inside my eyelids
So my dreams are filled with
The magnificent contrast
Beautiful simplicity
The truth shown through your eyes and the eyes of your camera, held at navel level, as you look into the eyes of your subject
What true art you have made!
Art rarely seen
Until after you passed
I wished I could meet you
A true beautiful soul
Why do all the beautiful souls leave me here?
Your pictures of the poor enlighten me
Your scenery inspires me
I can almost hear your faux French accent

You worked as a nanny
And you hid yourself
With fake names
Always a secret
You locked the doors behind you
For years your art was locked in boxes
Boxes and boxes
And photos of dead horses
Crying children
Extreme human conditions
Photos of trashcans
All was art
You could truly see it couldn't you?
You could see the truth
Of which I wish to write

I hope you were happy
Or at least content
I hope the nights weren't too dark
I hope you are glad to hear
The world loves what you have done
I thank you
We all thank you
And I wish you well

Somewhere now cars dance on the highway
All of my heroes long asleep under dirt or drifting around with the dust
I sit on the floor of my room
Drinking water that has sat on my desk for a day
Beside me sits "Ode to Common Things" by Pablo Neruda
My room is filling to the brim with common things
Like clothes I either never wear or wear too much
Books never read
Chalk and safety pins

Lately the inability to write has left me feeling a lot of dread
My inability to write comes from my inability to know what to say which comes from feeling really really far down that no ones really listening or caring
My time is split between library aisles, folk punk music, wild poet friends, the Spanish Civil War and talking to a girl who lives in Georgia
I'm here looking into mirrors only to see a different person each day
So I take pictures of each stranger and put them on the Internet for friends to decipher
But I won't be getting any answers tonight
I fall asleep under enough covers for now
I fall asleep in the silent nights of December

This
Is
Ragnarok
The violent end of worlds you’re pagan ancestors feared
Watch as the strikes from Thor steal your comrades from you
No Valkyries to guide you
No Valhalla to welcome you
Ankle deep in mud and rats and **** you load your rifle begging the God you believe in that you won’t have to **** another man

How did you find yourself here?
An Englishman fighting Germans in France
Because a Serbian killed an Austrian in Bosnia
Or an Italian, 43 years after your country was unified
Or a Serbian, longing to free your countrymen from Austro-Hungarian oppression
Or maybe your a Russian, a Frenchman, a Turk

Hear the whistle blow
Now is your time to storm from the trenches into razor wire and the the hail of bullets
You will likely be slaughtered
Like the 40,000 French soldier during one week of the war
This is a tragedy
But this is also a holy experience
Like for T E Lawrence
Fighting for a cause he never thought he would believe in
Or Ernst Jünger
Surviving bullet after bullet
Endless bombardments
This is the heroes journey
Do not let your children’s children take away from your sacrifice
When they say you died for nothing
You believed in your nation and you believed in yourself

Do not let them take that away from you
You who returned home and were ignored if not simply forgotten
Who returned home missing limbs, missing homes, missing loved ones
You who were traumatized shell shocked
Who could not return home
Who returned to what was supposed to be home
But life went on without you
So you found those who fought with you
From your bonds you formed brotherhoods
Formed paramilitaries

But that all comes later
Right now you look death in the eyes and can’t help but laugh
Laugh to keep yourself from crying
Laugh because you have never felt more alive than in this moment and never will again
And in this moment you can’t help but cry out
AVANTI
ARDITI

I had a dream the other night
That I had found a window
And that window revealed to me the entire world
I could see everything there is to see
I could see the sun set in one land
As it rose in another
Nothing could hide from the windows gaze

I could see kids in public parks
Late at night
Staring at the dark, foreboding trees
Hallucinating the majesty
Of the way the branches moved in the wind
And upon reflection
Were called into the forest
By the sinister shadows inside themselves

On the West Coast I saw a girl
Separated from her Midwestern friends
And her Midwestern love
(Whom I have not met)
I see as her mind is split
Cross country style
And her thoughts fall
Like the raindrops on her window

I see a single match being lit
In the basement of an East Coast hospital
A young boy has traveled many miles
(Hitchhiked across the country
In a time where the Cassadys and Kerouacs
The great heroes of the road
Have all died out
And the road is home to the carcasses of a million dear
A thousand raccoons and a hundred skunks)
The boy lights a second match
And with the match lights a candle
Then he pulls out an old dusty guitar
And begins to play

The boy,
Born too late,
Journeyed to this hospital
The hospital here his hero stayed
While his hero’s mind decayed
But now there is no one around
The hospital is long empty
So he plays a tune to himself
The guitars’ celestial strings sing
Echo through the Empty
But with the window I see the boy is not alone
The spirit of the boy’s hero
Smiles down upon the boy from Heaven
And with God & Saints
Bless the boy
The song
The guitar

Miles away
Out west on a lonesome prairie
In the cover of night
I see a man sit at the bar of a diner
The warm glow does not penetrate far into the solid darkness
The man is alone
A fry cook stands in the kitchen
But is not in the man’s view
The hostess is out back
Smoking in silence
The man is left with his thoughts
Along with his rancher’s jacket
And ***** ball cap
This man wears an air of sadness
I can’t hear what he is thinking
But in his silence I can feel the weight of that sadness
I can almost know all his troubles
The man finishes his coffee
Puts money on the counter
And leaves without saying a word

As the dream ends
And I can feel myself begin to wake
I can see all those faces staring back at me
Each look through their own windows
I see the man stare through his car window
And the window of hope
I see the West Coast girl
Stare out the window of a plane
And the window of longing
I see the boy stare through the window of time
And finally I see the children in the parks
Staring through the window of Nature
And the window of the soul

If writing poetry is like giving blood
That would explain why I'm so dizzy half the time
And why I haven't written anything worth saying since December
I have been listening to the same songs
Over
And over
And over again
I stopped asking myself if my life's worth living and started asking if I'm even living
I keep getting angry to the point my nerves have worn down to nothing
And let me tell you
There are few feelings worse than feeling helpless when you know you shouldn't
Feeling helpless when you've got plenty more privileges than the next person in line
Should I allow myself to feel this way when my life was never in danger and I still live at home?
Just another egalitarian with empty hands
Plagiarizing my manifestos from the lips of people I've never met
Beating my feet on the ground or fist on my chest thinking anyone gives enough of a **** to know what song is stuck in my head today or yesterday or for all eternity
Every love song or song of peace or song of quiet is gone
All that's left are songs for battle
But the more I sing the words the more I question if they mean anything to me or if they will last beyond my life
Maybe we could build a better world if I wasn't such a coward
Maybe we could all be free if I wasn't such a hypocrite
Maybe I'm being to ******* myself but nights like these I can't allow myself to be too comfortable or it could mean death

You sent me a message the other day
It had been two years since we really spoke honestly
Two years and many angry poems about it all
It was really good to hear from you
You're younger than me, but you know much more about being an adult than I do
You know a lot more about being an honest person than I do
But today I tried to do better
Not for your sake (or my memory of you)
But for my own

Where did those
Big scaly monsters go?
I'm tired of paying for gas
It would be so much easier
To fly to school on a dragon
No one’s gonna cut off a dragon
And I won’t need to worry about parking
Just stick it in the quad
And walk around the charred bodies
When I leave

On a shaded bench I sit
As large black birds squabble
& squawk
& fly all around my head
Families walk around
Forcing pictures
My family is elsewhere
I enjoy the momentary solace

32 men from Gonzales
Died near where I sit
Yet I can smell no gunpowder
I can hear neither shots nor cries
Only families snapping pictures
And children crying in the Texan sun

In Genesis it talks about God giving people the breath of life
I believe that this happened and I am thankful
It is also said that Siddhartha Gautama reached enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree by observing his breath in meditation for three days
I have always considered the Buddha to be a pretty smart guy
My one issue with running is I have trouble breathing
When I'm stressed I take in deep breaths
I have the repeated verse of Machinehead stuck in my head

Breathe in
Breathe out

The air around us connects us to all living things
Sometimes I think that the air I breathe is the same air Allen Ginsberg once breathed and I feel glad
I once was in the same room as the air Bob Dylan breathed and that was pretty cool
On nights of poetry I breathe in the same air as my friends, whom I love dearly

Breathe in
Breathe out

I started meditating last week and I want to tell everyone
If I'm obnoxious I'm not sorry
But when you have lived a life of constant divided attention you enjoy not worrying about anything
I am hesitant to find someone who takes my breath away
Because at times my breath is the only thing I own
I am afraid to drown
I am afraid to suffocate
Breath is what connects us to all living things
So breathe

Breathe in
Breathe out

~Dedicated to the memory of the brave men and women of the Spanish Republican Militias, who bravely fought in the name of true freedom and a better world for all people~

Are we good enough to see the sun rise tomorrow?
Are we good enough to ever be free?
Can we forgive those who we think crossed us?
Can we ever convince ourselves that some people are worth protecting?
Will I remember to pray to God when I need to?
Maybe for me the revolution has to be personal
I was always more of an Allen Ginsberg than a Che Guevara
I worry that if I don't look like I'm fighting I'll never be taken seriously
They need to see me bleed to know I'm serious
But even when I was younger I acted different than everyone I knew
And I always get to the parties late
And I always have to leave early
My revolution is within me
The barricades are around my heart
This is a bad strategy and I'm getting nowhere fast
My life is passing me by as I count the days until a war entirely in my head
Are we good enough to live in a better world?
Well I sure as hell know we aren't perfect
But Joe Strummer thought we were good enough
And Woody Guthrie thought we were good enough
And Peter Kropotkin thought we were good enough
And maybe that's going to have to be good enough

If you have no windows
No windows will get broken
But then again
How will you let the sun come in?

When I look into the mirror
I see the fragments of all the people I used to be
I have written enough poems about this
But it never seems to escape my mind
I used to be obsessed with time
In love with passing days and ticking clocks
Treated each day like a chapter in a book
But now everything just blurs into one unending cycle of the same events again and again
I have no inspiration for art
I haven't touched the typewriter for months
I've forgotten the smell of incense
Books of poetry sit unread and uncared for
Someone needs to go back to this summer
And tell me to slow it down
Don't take all of this for granted
Don't move so fast
You're not burning out
You're burning up
Setting fire to your sanity and crying deep in the back of your skull
You won't get out of bed anymore
You sit in the dark in your car
Not wanting to go inside not wanting to face anyone else not wanting the cycle to make its next round

If I could talk to my younger self
I'd say don't lose sight of what is beautiful
Listen to Woody Guthrie odes to all smiling people
Think about Kerouac meditations under pine trees
Love each friend like Ginsberg would want you to
Take the wild Hunter S Thompson ride
Don't lose who you are
Because it will take some time to find yourself again

Do I have to love anybody?
Like I mean in particular
Do I have to pick and choose one soul to love for X amount of years until they die or I die or one of us becomes "dead" to each other?
Do I have to pick and choose
Or can I love everyone?
Can I love the idea of people
The idea of being alive
The idea that we are working everyday for a brighter future
The idea that we won't stop fighting as long as there's somebody left to save
Almost every girl I have ever had a thing for
Is in a happy relationship now
And I'm thankful for that
Can I love the sun?
Even though I say I hate how it gets in my eyes and makes everything too **** hot or too **** bright
Can I love the moon?
Even if I barely take any moments to appreciate it
At night all my blinds are shut tight because of silly paranoia I know is silly
But can I still love the moon?
I have love for a million boxcars thundering down train tracks and a million semi's whose occupants will make it home just in time for the weekend
I love Gordon Downie and his infinite courage and strength
I love the spirit of Catalonia that comforts me when I start to get sick of the world around me
Today I can't think of anyone I hold too much animosity towards to say I love them in some regard
And if this is wrong
And I can only love one thing out of all the things in creation
Then I'll love "us"
All 7 billion
Of us

I'm sure St. Valentine was coerced
He doesn't seem like a box of chocolates and flowers kind of guy
I'm sure somebody bought him out

It's a chilly October  morning
As I sit down and reflect
On this summer
I can see my breath
And my sleeves are long

Soon it will have been a year
Since this whole mess started
I'm not entirely sure
About how I've grown
Or the lesson I needed to learn
I don't even know what I want to write
But thank God for this music I'm playing  
Focusing my mind
I sit on a ledge in the Quad
Blasting this music from a small black box

If I learned a single thing from
The summer of my "discontent"
Is that there were parts of this world
And parts of myself
I was missing when I was with you
I am more whole without you

This notebook is filling up
Notebook I brought to Montana
Notebook I had in Yellowstone
Notebook I had in San Antonio
Where I tried to write
Woody Guthrie folk songs
And I first started
My Ginsberg-Kerouac-Sandburg
Poetics
I am not ready for this chapter to close
But like all things
It must
And I will love it always
Like every other chapter
I've lived
Even the one with her

Ladies and Gentlemen
Please silence your cell phones
I want to hear the children sing
For they sing a song
Sad but lovely
Their voices rise like smoke
To be carried off in the breeze

Let me have peace
Quiet your voices
Quiet your minds
Listen to the children sing
They sing away oppression
Cast out hatred
Become baptized by the children’s song

Let me hear the holy songs
Of the holy Children
Let me free my soul
To the songs of Love, innocent & free
Songs about the Earth, basking in Eternity

Men & Women
Put down your guns
Cast away your atom bombs
& nuclear deaths
Stop your fighting
Silence your scream
For we all need to hear the children sing

When you write a poem
What do you tell them?
Are you honest with them?
Do you tell them that you believe in God
That, though you are not Catholic, you believe in holy saints in plain clothes
Saints that don't know they are saints
No one can tell until they speak holy words of compassion
Do you tell them you think there is a bigger plan?
A greater purpose outside of passing off genetic material to another generation
Would they ask you what it means to you when someone says born again?
Would you tell them that you feel born again most Sundays but let yourself slip back into comfortable death the next morning?
Do you tell them about your job?
(Do they care?)
Do you tell them about your dreams?
(Do they listen to that either?)
Do you tell them that lately your dreams have been faint and you are afraid that one day you are going to wake up and not recognize the pieces that are left on the floor?
Do you tell them when you are down and out?
That you prefer using the term "melancholy"
Because it sounds a lot more artistic than "like ****"
Do you tell them that you think you sometimes swear a little too much?
That it makes you seem unapproachable
Do you tell them about your struggle to decide whether or not you want to make yourself approachable for love?
Do you tell them that maybe you saying "I don't have the energy to invest in a relationship" also means "I don't have the energy to invest in a heartbreak"
Do you tell them you have never been that great at love and you are afraid you missed every chance you had
Do you tell them you would rather dig the world
(As your heroes say)
Do you ask them if you talk about your heroes too much?
Do you tell them about the tears shed for Johnny Cash that night after you finished his memoir?
Do you tell them where you where when you heard the news of Pete Seeger's death and wished you would have learned it later?
Do you tell them about all the times you look in the mirror and tell yourself "Joe Strummer lived with such power that his heart gave out, how dare you be so apathetic, with such self pity"
Do you tell them that you love them?
Even if you don't know them that well and don't understand exactly what they are going through
That deep deep down you do secretly understand
What should you tell them when you write your poems?
You should tell them that