Two years now
Since I have walked the streets
Of the city of New York
I remember Central Park
Avenue of The Americas
A statue of a man
Like Sandburg's General
"Riding like hell on horseback"
The inscription reads as follows
"Apostle of Cuban Independence"
José Martí you truly were an honest man
Your words were the green of the spring leaves breaking free from the winter
Your words were red like the blood you shed
The revolution you died for
The revolution you were sent to a work camp for
The revolution you spent most of your life in exile for and lead you to write "Do not put me in the dark to die like a traitor"
"Leader of the Peoples of America"
José Martí how many New York souls walk by you without a second thought?
How many don't know your name?
They see a man on horseback
Do they see you as the poet you were?
Do they know you as one who loves and creates?
"Defender of Human Dignity"
José Martí what dignity have they left you?
The statue is the moment you were shot and killed on horseback
You were no general
You only wanted to see your country free
José Martí you deserve better than to be locked in eternal death
On a quiet April night I see you writing at a desk
Longing to return home
Longing to return to Cuba and never leave again
José Martí I think of you now
You are a good thing
And you died with your face to the sun
And I too will fill my face with sunlight
And remember your name

And on that day I decided
I wasn't going to go home
Or at least not yet
And so I got in my car and drove the opposite direction and surrounded myself with books and not with the silence and solitude my house offers when no one is home
Where I sit and force myself to believe that there is nothing to do
But on that day I didn't go home
And the days after that I went on walks around neighborhoods with music drowning out all else like I was in Nirvana walking down streets nodding to old men on porches and watching trees sway in gentle breezes
And a few nights later I sat on an old swing in my back yard
And it was in that moment that I thought of you Allen
Allen Ginsberg big beat poet with Buddhist beard and round belly always smiling always there to help a friend whether it's money for Corso or a walk with Kerouac by all the locomotive sunflower days in California
Or Tangiers sipping on mint tea
Or ghats in India
Lost notebooks in Russia or was it Cuba
Oh Allen I think of you now on this summer night
Allen you would have turned 91 today isn't that crazy
The world has only gotten crazier since you left it and there are times I wish you were here because, though I never knew you, you seemed to have a lot of the answers
Like "you'll die when you die there's no use worrying about it"
And Allen wherever you are now I hope you are with Naomi and Peter and Neal and all the other angels you loved so deeply
Allen I wish I could love with half the strength you could
I wish I could see the world through your eyes or at the very least through your eyeglasses
But tonight I will have to make do with the jazz that's coming through my headphones
And the gentle summer breeze through my bedroom window

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

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 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

I tried to write a poem today
But I wrote nothing
Because I feel nothing
Nothing's on my mind

Winona Ryder looks so young
Driving a cab smoking a cigarette
I don't watch movies with plots anymore
Coffee and Cigarettes and Slacker
All random episodes
Hundreds of people I'll forget by the morning
But it isn't like I'll remember if I met them
Or that they'll remember me
We're all stuck in this night on earth

And as the train drove past I rolled down my windows to listen
I was driving the opposite direction
And maybe there's a poem in that
Maybe I'm delusional at this point
And out this newly open window I sing
Of "all my cocktails be Molotov"
But I don't mean it
I don't mean what I say anymore

Maybe things were beautiful then
Maybe they should be now
Maybe they really are and I can't see it
But what prescription makes the people smile back?

My life is a series of random events
No plot no explanation no chaser
Knee **** reactions to every 24 hours and tomorrow I'm a new character somewhere else

I finally wrote a poem today
But it wasn't any good
But I don't feel bad about it
Because I feel nothing
And nothing's on my mind

I can feel the drum beats in my bones
I close my eyes and I can feel my soul
And I can sense that it wishes nothing more
Than to leave this stubborn body
So it can dance in the air
To the great guitar vibrations
And the melody of the wind
The sweet smell of cigarette smoke drifts past
As the first band finishes
All is now quiet
I wake from one trance
And gratefully await the next

Whether we like it or not
We are a product of our memories
Our past
But the memories only have the power
That we give them
This poem would have been about
Desperation
Disappointment
Fear
Loathing
But as I sat and looked at the words already birthed unto the page
I didn't know where I wanted to take it
And in that moment of blessed and holy realization I knew immediately that wasn't the poem I wanted to write
Loathing had its time
Fear was an anchor only attached by a narrow thread
Disappointment was a lie to myself
And I felt no more desperate at this moment than I did when a million other horrible moments were conceived by my mind and cemented in my heart and ultimately made me
I am the direct consequence of my circumstance
And I wish it to be no other way
Failure is only but a new way of finding a path
The true path
I do not walk blindly
My stumbles are a part of my stride
This poem would have been about sadness
But I realized the sadness wasn't me after all

A year ago I could have told you
That the words I wrote were true
That they came from my heart
But today I can't lie to you
Not like that
Tell it to me straight
What I have been writing lately hasn't been poetry
It's the same cry for help in different shades of meaning
Different fists beating against different walls
The only thing that's constant is having to wake up and go to work or go to class and the feeling that everything is entirely utterly empty
I used to drive down highways with windows down blasting jazz
Music I played and music I heard used to stimulate every inch of skin like the breeze that blows leaves through mountain forests
I would rather another summer heartbreak than this emptiness
That old summer heartbreak has become the solemn resolution "well she's happy now forgotten all about me it's all past"
Please won't somebody break my heart
Because that would mean that I had fallen in love again
Which would mean I felt something again

I told you I would get home
No later than midnight
And I did
But instead of sleep I listened to beauty through two headphone speakers
I could feel the rays of sunlight coming down between the gaps of branches
I dream again of my shack in the forest
I dream again of streams and solitude
The love I once had for the world I'm in
And the people I meet
Is not too far gone
And someday I will reach it again
And I will breathe in the morning air
And again I will be alive
And I'll go to sleep no later than midnight

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

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

““Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self”

I.
They tell me life is good
And I believe them
But life is a heavy affair
They tell me to seek out beauty
They tell me to attain love
But love, life, beauty these things are heavy
I ask to be unburdened from the love that they try to sell me
Let me love without romance
Let me love without having to say a word
Let me see the beauty in the garbage and the rubble and the decay
Allow me a life on my own terms
A life unburdened by expectations good or bad

II.
They tell us a better world is impossible
They tell us we are greedy
Well let us be greedy together!
Let us be greedy for laughter
Greedy for joy
Let our collective greed take the land from the landlord
So that all may have a place to live
Let our greed take the food that waits to rot
So that all may have a bite to eat
Let our greed pave the way to a better future
For the enjoyment of all

III.
I look into my reflection
And I remark how alien it is to me
This skin is not me
These eyes are not me
This smile is not me
All these things I see in the reflection belong to me
They are mine
But they are not me
I am nothing in the best way possible
I am the limits of what I allow myself to be
I wish to reject any conception of myself that is based on
An identity I did not make
I wish to undue any conception of myself that is based on
A piece of cloth on a pole, where I was born based on lines I did not draw,
Even the details of this body I call my own
I wish to be an expressive moment
Of joy and of freedom
I am nothing in the best way possible
I wish to be nothing if not Unique

“Have the courage to be destructive and you will soon see which wonderful flowers grow out of the ashes of what you have torn down”

11:42
I should honestly be asleep now
But instead I lay here and listen
To October winds
Blowing through my neighborhood

Yes it is October now
It never started feeling like summer to me
Now why am I so surprised it's gone?

But honestly October
What is it about you
That made Jack fall in love with you
That makes the kids of my generation
Manic
And ranting
Pumpkin crazed
October winds are peaceful not spooky

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.”

"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

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood”

It is written in the Hagakure
That when faced with situations
Of life and death
To choose death
For it is more honorable to do so and die
Than to choose life
Retreat
And then die all the same

Is this what it means to be bold?
To strike out
Against odds that seem impossible?
To stand strong and shout out the eternal phrase of
“I don’t give a ****”
The one in the arena
The ultimate stoic
Uncompromising but not cruel

I must become a man of action
And though it is not the singular soul that drives history forward
Those who do so are not passive
Not timid
They do what must be done
Like Lenin
They are reasonable people
Even when pushed to do things that seem unreasonable at the time

This is how one must be bold
Taking hold of that great spirit that drives all great people of action
To be determined, strong, discipline,
More virtues to be explored
Legs strong as sequoias
I stand on stage in front of you
Reminding myself
And urging those of you who need to hear this
Stand in that arena
Do not choose retreat
Be bold
And leave your mark on the world around you

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

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

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

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...

I am in love with Allen Ginsberg's Sunflower Sutra
And I am in love with sunflowers
But those two facts aren't necessarily connected
If someone ever asks me when I think I will die my reply will be "exactly when I need to"
I once heard of a Buddhist philosophy where you envision everything you own broken, so when the world beats everything you own into the dirt you can smile because it is a fact you have already accepted
The things you own cannot be truly yours until you accept that they are not eternal
I find it important to smile at everyone I make eye contact with
Even if the smile I produce is the usual awkward mess
I don't carry on this practice with the idea that "smiles are contagious"
I do it because I have spent enough of my life with the look of distaste across my face to grow tired of it
This poem is nothing special
It will start no revolutions
It will be forgotten
It will not make you or me or anyone else holy
That's not what it's for
This poem is for a small smile and a chuckle on a night where everything is so bleak and dull
This poem is for me to remember the little things that make this life of mine worth all the trouble
You can feel free to use it too
I won't mind

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

And maybe I haven’t felt alive since those summers
When I close my eyes I can feel a warmth that is not quite sunshine not quite nostalgia not quite bittersweet heartbreaks so long removed from my thoughts
I was so much younger then
Or at least I feel older now
And though I’ve never moved from this room or this house I’ve never really felt at home since then
Memories flash through before graduations both college and high school flashes of me at my desk on a laptop long since deceased
And I remember Death Cab for Cutie of all bands
Grapevine Fires and that song that made me want to wear cardigans
And I remember Fanfarlo trumpet fanfare, Decemberist Crane Wives, and that moment that the song Little Lion Man first felt new
Maybe I haven’t felt the same because I’ve never been in love quite like I felt in those days
But that doesn’t explain the more recent, the drives with Jazz and beat Poet souls, long after romance had faded
Black and white footage of Pull My Daisy and all the familiar faces in New York apartment and you could almost hear Dave Van Ronk or Bob Dylan in the background folk alleyways
Oh the emotions I had then
The passion I had for life
It didn’t seem much then, but now it’s like I hide in the shadow of it
I’ve considered giving up writing because the words don’t come
It’s taken me 3 poems to get this emotion right and I still won’t be happy with it when I end up reading it
But maybe I’m remembering because those parts of me are not forever gone in long past memories buried by political odes and the need to be serious I tell myself I need to be serious all the time because I never could take myself seriously
I always saw myself as a parody of what I wanted to be
A parody of the Doctor a parody of Guthrie a parody of Dylan, of Ginsberg, of Kerouac, of Lenin, a parody of the parody that is myself
But hopefully that is all over now
Hopefully I’ll be able to feel the warm heart deep feelings of those summers past
Without anyone’s help or anyone’s sympathy or well wishes


And maybe I haven’t felt alive since those summers
But I sure as hell ain’t dead yet

Only a matter of time
Is what I muttered to myself
For the better part of a week now
But that day has come
That day has come
And no one knows but me
And you
But you really knew all along
Didn't you?
Holidays tend to spell the end for me
And the writing on the walls is the same color as the warning lights I ignored for months
No one knows but us
No one knows but us
And only I know what these nights can do to me
Blasting Dead Kennedys to write this poem
Carve my doubts and solace into walls
I warned the both of us
but we were too young and proud to listen
We were warned
And tonight
If the devil goes down to Georgia
He will take Sherman with him
But the hand of war is here
And I can only keep it out of my heart for so long
State lines are prison walls
Only if you want them to be
An incarceration in my mind
Solitary confinement in my head
My heart beats like a gavel
Darling I'm here for life

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

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

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

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

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

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 woke up the other morning
And when I rose from my bed I stepped
Into a puddle of enlightenment
That had poured from my ears
And pooled on the floor
From the night before

Webster's dictionary contains a definition for freedom
But I will never read it
The Constitution mentions justice
But I'm not sure if anyone knows what that means
One of my biggest fears is a people's revolution without any humanity
Any great revolution must be an act of humanity

One day we won't bite the hands that feed us
Because the hands that feed us will be our own
Most mornings I have coffee for breakfast
I like the coffee pitch black and too strong to stomach
I like my coffee so strong that the truth is easier to swallow
I am no true revolutionary
I'm a middle class white boy from the suburbs  
Born the day Malcolm X died
31 years later
I have no more that $200 in the bank
I still live with my parents
I'm a poet who is afraid of running out of words
I'm a beat wannabe who's never hitched the highways and has never seen California
I'm a *** with a job
I'm a punk with a tie
I'm a lefty folk singer who believes in God

I am no true revolutionary
But at this point we have had enough of those
I am a man with fire in his blood
Child of John Brown and Joe Hill
The wayward ghost of Tom Joad
I am incredibly tired

If enlightenment is clarity
And clarity is being honest with yourself
I am enlightened
These hands have worked
This skin has sweat
This tongue has spoke
This man has bled
I have sung the songs that come from the deepest depths of the human heart
And the day will come when I write my own
I am no true revolutionary
But my heart beats the revolution

I haven't written in weeks
And when I did before the words read empty
As they tend to do
Again I find myself sitting alone
A table for one facing the wall
Lost in the sea of a college campus
Hundreds of miles away LRADs blast away  protesters protecting sacred land
Stock prices unthinking and unfeeling
Are obsessed over by men in suits who won't have to worry about if they get to eat tonight
On my arms I carve the words I learned in a women's studies class freshman year
"The personal is political"
Personally I am desolate
Disillusioned with anything I've ever had to say
Unable to bring myself to say more
Politically I am livid
In my veins are the Sacco and Vanzetti electricity
So I spit
Look to the ground
and walk
With a look of righteous anger
And I read
Collected works of Huey Newton and an article about Marxism and Class

When the personal and the political meet I feel hopeless
Disoriented and disillusioned
Not two halves at war but two puzzle pieces desperately trying to fit
I think of a heaven after I die
While advocating for a heaven on earth for everyone
I want to stand and fight
While I feel uncomfortable speaking up in class
I don't believe there is freedom in a free market
But what do I really know about it anyways?
Freedom and hope and art and love
Words that swim around in my head
They lack solidity
I can't grasp them
The meaning drips out of my ears as if they were bleeding
I can't fall asleep at night because I keep coughing
I think about Woody Guthrie
Singing about the powers of the working class and dreaming of what America could one day become
I think of his better world and I can console myself with the ringing of guitar in my ears
I think about Pat
Looking for times worth living in whatever car or house he lives in
Breaking windows to redemption if not freedom and holding on with all that's left
I think about myself
One year of poetry under my belt
Still struggling with what I want to say
Centuries of politics in my head
Still struggling with who I want to be
Personal and political are more than just words to me

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

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

I take deep breaths inches away from the pillow
I take deep breaths to center myself
I am here
I am now
But have I forgotten who I am?
   Am I the boy who went to New York on a weekend trip and visited MacDougal street and Washington Square park and didn't see a single folk singer?
   Who ate a date cookie in Chinatown and a cannoli and little Italy because it felt right and good at the time
   Am I the Woody Guthrie Pete Seeger wannabe who asked the audience to sing along to a song they didn't know and no one sang but you didn't care because the words were yours yet you didn't write them?
   Who freshman year read On The Road and Howl and told himself he would be a poet and saw beauty in the world and thought about all the people with beating hearts
   Who sophomore year got his heart smashed against the pavement but decided not to blame himself for convenience sake and is still reeling from his poor choices
   Who took a trip with friends to the Ohio river and held rocks in his pocket because he was prepared to fight his way out if he had to
   who fed his own delusion that he would ever fight his way out
    who lied to himself that he had the spine to fight
   Am I the one who read Siddhartha and vowed to be better and looked toward a golden and eternal time where the words would be simple
   Who cried at Ginsberg who cried at Wolfe and who cried at the Bible because he knew what things were holy
   Who drank tea to center himself who ran to keep himself in shape who had a good time because the world was full of love

Or am I nothing more than what I am now
Breathing inches away from my pillow
Breathing to center myself
So I can be here
So I can be now

What can I add that isn't already there?
What have I said that really needed to be?
What drove me to write poetry outside of Steinbeck, Ginsberg, and you, Thomas
I have seen endless rivers
I have had my fill of stones leaves and unfound doors
My roots are of a shallow depth
My branches do not reach as yours did
My inspiration is a well run dry
My words are saliva on sidewalk
Is there a fate for me in California?
Is there a place more kind than home?
Is there a life for those who seek angels made of stone?
Thomas you saw an America I never could
You reached great heights I may never touch
But Thomas your legacy rests in my heart
I will never forget you
Angel child of Asheville
Wild man of words and words
Pages and pages
Thomas the river will always welcome you home

I will never beg you to like me
I will never force you to read or listen
To what I have to say
One day, on your own accord, you will listen
And you will understand
You know what I am saying
Because you feel it too
We all feel something like this while alive
No one promised us that Earth will be our friend
No one promised simplicity
One day you will read the words I write
On Thursday nights in my bathroom as I stare into my mirror and wonder who I am
You will read those words and you will feel in your heart what I have said because everyone like us has something in their heads
I will not beg you to understand
Because one day you will

It's too late for me my friends
Pacing around my kitchen with a half empty bottle of Red Stripe I write this poem to you
To anyone who gives a **** enough to pay attention and listen to all the nonsense that leaves my lips
I am a man with no realistic goals
I am a man who does not listen to the battle cry that beats in his chest and forces it's way through his veins
Instead I plug my ears because I know what danger would come from action
I am a slave to inaction
And I've been told that a slave that doesn't defy their master is not yet deserving of their freedom
While I don't believe that's the truth, I let it apply to me
Because I am a coward
Nothing I want is attainable
None of my dreams are feasible
I have lost more times than I can count
But maybe if I lose enough, it will mean someday I've won
Because I don't want to live a quantifiable life of wins and losses
Successes and failures
I want a life that is worth getting up each morning
A life of joy that is armed to the teeth
Because from John Brown to Emiliano Zapata
From Spanish barricades to French communes
I believe that the heroes who fail are the only one's worth having
Because in failure there is always action
There is sincerity and the feeling that what one is doing must happen eventually
So why not now?
What is stopping me from saying "no more shall I live a life that isn't according to the what I believe"
I believe in a life like the hardships of Paul
"Sorrowful but always rejoicing
Poor yet making many rich
Having nothing yet possessing everything"
Alone I must build for myself a life worth living
And together we can build a world we can finally call home

I have heard your words in the night
I have read everything your heart has moved to
The very words written on your soul plain as day
There is no need for ambiguity
The bags under your eyes are because you can't sleep
You climb bridges because you know what horrors await at ground level
At times you remind me of myself
In the trinity of your world, you take the place I do
The ghost who stands tall and skinny
I have walked parts of the path you travel and if my journey is any indication you have nothing to fear
I am with you tonight in spirit
You have no need to be baptized by fire for if no one else I can forgive you
Pain in this world isn't always your fault but you are responsible for how it moves you
Do not be pushed into harsh action my brother
Understand the sovereignty of choice for all individuals and that times and people change
Do not blame yourself for the sadness you feel
The writing on the wall whispers "be calm be still breathe"
The saints and prophets wish you well
We are all but skeletons left here
Dry bones rising out of the sand of the desert
Just like Ezekiel
Stand tall and trust that nothing is imaginary
The wounds on your hands will heal and the snow will give way to flowers again

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

The tone of my summer was set three days before it began
As I look back now it's as if I am looking into the mouth of a long forgotten cavern
On that day I got the message
A message that I knew was in front of me the whole time like a snake whose venom had already seeped through my skin
But now the message was tangible
Sent to me by a friend
A screenshot from your private Twitter you wouldn't let me follow
What it said was unimportant
What it confirmed was something I should have known all along but made myself blind to in order to keep up the illusion that we weren't falling apart
Yet the truth was that for a month now we were the farthest apart we had ever been

You said it wasn't cheating because we weren't "technically together"
You had said a break was what you needed
And I wouldn't have been suspicious if that hadn't just come up the day after you kissed him at some drunken madhouse party
And if you don't call it cheating what was the point of lying to my face and sneaking out at night?
I went to your house in a moment of foolish desperation and you lied while looking into my eyes
The truth would have been easier

Summer came nonetheless and I begged you to explain yourself and be honest about what had happened
You refused to say a **** word and honestly that hurt more than the actions you took
It's been 8 months now and I still don't know what happened

The first half of summer was madness and bitter anger
Over 19 years I had built a reservoir of raw emotion and when the dam finally broke it was from a hole no bigger than a pinprick
Yeah I acted like a child
I admit that what I did was wrong but at the time it felt nothing but appropriate
Half of summer I brewed in a disgust that only ever bordered on hatred
And I never left you alone like I should have
I wanted to dig myself a hole all the way down to the burning magma with no intention of dying but rather a grave deep enough to bury my bitterness

Half of summer I wanted to hate you
I couldn't
The first half of summer closed as a chapter of utter frustration and complete denial of who I thought we both were
In the end I cared less about the relationship but rather the seven year friendship that was ruined for a guy you talked to for no more than a month
The first half soon ended and the next began

I don't remember when the turning point was
But finally the anger inside of me degraded and only pieces were left
In the second half of summer I began to write again
But I made my room a tomb
A mausoleum built not to keep me inside but to prevent myself from making this mess worse
It was this half of summer that I realized that it was all doomed to happen from the start
It had been years since we both fell in love
And in the time between we grew
We both had boarded trains going different directions
And instead of accepting that fact we tried to put both trains on the same track
Why were we so surprised when the trains collided?

In this half of summer I knew that what happened was more of my fault than anyone else's
These are the kinds of things that happen when you turn a blind eye to reality and instead only saw the dreams in my head
These truths made me feel no better than before
The bitterness was still there and I reached its epicenter one night in San Antonio
San Antonio where I realized the weight I had gained and where I knew I wanted leave all thoughts of you behind

We stopped talking
It was the best decision I had made for months
And in this time I felt both forgiveness and regret begin to grow
The darkest parts were over yet I decided to close myself off to others

In this time did I forget beauty?
Did I ignore love?
No
Instead I turned the love I had for you into steam energy and saw again the beauty in the world around me
I took the love of one beating heart and extended it to every beating heart within radius
This is how I found healing
And this is how I realized that the pain I felt had become less heartbreak and more ego
I decided to gather as much as that ego I could to burn it and spread the ashes

I have said before
We are products of our past
The two halves of summer were nothing more than individual tracks leading my train farther down the line
Destination: anywhere
Any homes of love, beauty, or any other arbitrary human word for the holy things
Summers end was a flash of blinding light and I travel forward new
Less born again
More never having truly died

One has become the sunlight
Has become a field of endless sunflowers laughing and crying and being beautiful
This first friend lost because of a fight in the mountains and a bitter poem and inability to decide because I always knew the answer
This first friend had to get away from me and I don't blame them
Now I see the photographs of the first lost friend and I feel melancholy joy that the smile remains three years after I'm gone

Second friend broke my silly heart
Second friend on this list but for all intents and purposes first in many more respects
First time I knew that this sick machine of dark oil brooding and sentimental lunacy could feel regular old love
Second friend that was even the first of my living friends in all sincere sentiments
But the train couldn't bear to stay in the station for much longer and after 2 whole round trips decided that it was best to keep moving, coals in the furnace, fire burning the track behind
Lovely friend that I kept awake for in deep night searching for reasons to go meet the sun together
Honest friend who deep down knew that I would hurt in some way
Foolish friend who honestly felt that the best policy was not only keeping the skeletons in the closet but covering the closet door with wallpaper to keep everything in and me out

Two friends, oh how I disappointed you
How now I ache and twist in sleepless dreams of the one chance you come back to hear my apologies
But in wakeless days I watch and wait for a peace that won't come from either of you
Two forgotten lost friends burning holes in my heart with cigarette butts and cutting my mind with safety pins
It's nights like these where I want to see past my own reflection and see how you are

I once lived in absence of color
I saw with eyes crystal clear
And when the light first shone in I was afraid of what I saw
I cried out
Save me from the crimson that runs in my veins and drips from my gums
Hide me from the dark green of the forest near my house
Repair my heart after the betrayal of the most beautiful blue

But I have seen the splendor of the ocean's sunrise
I refuse to let life beat my skin till it's black and blue
I refuse to stay silent as my comrades bleed the brightest red
I refuse to let anyone who values a green piece of paper over another human life rest easy
If all that glitters is not gold then my skin will be steel and copper
I am an ironside floating on endless sea green
I am the thunder of a thousand cannons emitting grey smoke from black powder
I am the yellow sun and the silver moon
I am every shade of starlight
I am the darkest night sky and the purest day blue
My eyes are the brown dirt earth that will grow crops to feed all people  
I am the dirt that grows sunflowers reaching toward heaven
I am the ink and the paper where we write "which side are you on?"
"solidarity forever"
And "we shall overcome
Some day"

Our ancestors once believed that their gods lived at the tops of mountains
Unobtainable heights with metaphysical mystique
But like all esoteric secrets we’ve neutered them
Everest has become littered in tragedies
Testaments to our hubris
We need to learn again to respect those spiritual journeys
Made for the aristocrats of nothing more than the struggle
Re-learn to respect that struggle of step after step
Growing danger without the fear of a death that sits at sea level with arms outstretched ready to welcome you
These mountains were not made for all to experience their mystery
Not all are welcome to shake the hands of the gods of mythology
And that’s ok
But if you can do it
If you can slay the dragon like Sigurd
If you can sacrifice yourself to yourself  like Óðinn
If you can reach that mountaintop
Tell me
How did you enjoy the view?

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%

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

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

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

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