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I’ve been trying to get here all along   To the END   Walking a new trail is like reading a book Twists, turns, surprising perspectives Memories are summoned Like ghosts in the wind And I read myself into every word Every footstep And I just keep turning pages And walking Eager for the conclusion And yet I somehow hope The End will never come   Today I found it here   “END OF TRAIL”...

On that first day We woke up restless Stillborn, bleak, dry and dark Blood dispersed in the water black Ink without paper Language without form Absence without grief It was all ours And ours alone Hear the scalpel-sharp intake Of a baby’s first troubled breath On a day like this, there are no words Yet our voiceless cry, it must be heard For our wings, they are tired And there is no land in sight...

I was there at the breaking of dawn When the unknowable heavens Were divided from my unknowable heart When the mountains of my spine Emerged within the salty womb And trees took root With a harvest of life And breath And the pumping of my fragile heart Sustained by nothing but light And my waking life Was divided from its dream And my subconscious disturbed the surface Before diving deep on holy gill And my...

I am many things I am a roller coaster I am an overpriced funnel cake I am a long line for a short ride I am in on the take I am an unneeded traffic roundabout I am the price of gasoline I am pretty sure that I am self-doubt I am the spent remains of the Fourth of July I am climate change I am the spit in your eye I am death on...

Humboldt County The house we call our own Her laughter now fills this home It defies logic and reason And all good doctrine It sets sharply against The crushing weight of debt And doubt It ripples down the hall Like waves that dance On an ocean that will drown you Without thinking twice   From the depths I think about thirty different things All at once I should have painted more often And maybe wrote...

Oxidizing minerals form A pattern of Rorschach tests Across my chiseled face As I lay here quietly Holding the roof over our heads And the seven miles of air above it While you raise the family In the home beneath Where I am overlooked Not as warm as the bones of trees Nor as pure as the crushed bones of cattle I long to be seen To be read like a book A favorite novel...

What do you see? A land taken by zeros? More zeros than you’ll ever know? Taken by money changers That take all they want In exchange for their soul? If that’s all that you see You’ve only read headlines In the red letter press This isn’t your land This isn’t my land This is my father’s house And he’ll see you to the door If you think you’re any better If you’ve got the nerve...

In the home where I grew up A porcelain monk lived on the kitchen counter Belly full of cookies Admonishing us not to steal Back when the house was full of sneaky fingers   I saw him enter the kitchen one day 30 years ago Something clearly wrong Part of him had vanished Struggling for the words To tell me that my grandpa was gone His father The pastor The preacher Thou Shalt Not Steal...

There was a song my father sang Not really a song at all Just a rhythm of syllables Rising and falling With every step And a pause with Every breath   There were never any words Neither for the song itself Nor for the way It brings me home   It would often be sung Out in the wilderness Surrounded by wonders Sometimes emerging From an ice cold pool Formed by a beaver dam In...

I was made in California Born in Disneyland With a busted lung And a broken set of wings So it’s been foot on the ground And wheel on the road Up and down In exile ever since To a cold and distant shore Far from the evening palms And citrus mornings Roots bound In the floor of the van Stunted growth With a beautiful view Has been my holy rolling   Double yellow Single broken...