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

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

compilations of cold coffee cups,
dancing about in my candle-stained room
to French music from the 50's, today,
contrasting with the cacophony of construction
four stories beneath, below,
the day is blush.
rain as rosewater, fossilizes into flakes on the cheekbones, the lashes.
a quick reading of Kerouac reminds one to
believe in the 'holy contour of life,' whatever 'holy' means,
if it exists at all,
whether America is overrated,
whether i rather play in puddles of Scotland
or some foreign place,
how delightful it sounds, as Edith Piaf's
voice trances my loveless memory.
i'm cold. but we have to be.

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

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

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 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

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

"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

Poetry is not the most holy art
No art is holier than another
I tried to write songs
But no tune could come to me
And before that I tried to write stories
But they lacked filling
And the shells succumbed to their own emptiness
Yet all the while
Words remained

I tried to ensnare such words and trap them
But always they escaped
Slithering through the grooves and cracks of my conscious
Finally one day I laid my body on the ground
And let the words come as free as they liked
And only on that day
Did I begin to become a poet

Whether I achieve fame is meaningless
How many more true souls have come before me and have been ignored by the cold world?
I want to write not to be famous
But to know my voice is heard
And that I'm remembered
For to be remembered
Is to be eternal

Do I become a slave to my poetics?
Never
My poetic thought is a chunk of my self, bled out onto a page and then taken from the page by threads of voice to be dispersed into the air for the ears and hearts and minds
You can't be a slave to yourself, if the poetics are yours
And if the poetics are yours you will never betray yourself

If the pen is mightier than the sword, is this mic stronger than the gun?
Will the shouts of truth be stronger than the pierce of the bullet?
Because you better ******* believe that if I have breath in my lungs to spare I will shout these truths until the well runs dry and my voice shatters and my mind and heart rot

Poetry is no more holy than any other art
But poetry is going to shake this earth before I am gone and you better believe it