poem

Other days between.

August 3, 2015 — Leave a comment

We cooked hotdogs on the coals of the bridge we lit up the night before. I ain’t much for ballpark franks but that was a beautiful morning.
It was my turn to go fetch the water from the river. And I did so with a smile. Laughing about the absurdity of the year.
The sun sat golden in the branches like a glowing vulture feasting on dawn.

I don’t know what else I can tell you about that day. It was good.

Some folks trust to reason, others trust to might…

May 17, 2015 — Leave a comment
Sitting up here in this tree I can see a distance.
From leaving Illinois, to that feeling of being lost and not being looked for.
From stringing her along, to closing the door.
From her lake in northern Michigan, to the western coast I call home.
It seems often that we get lost in the day to day and can forget what moves it all.
I find the easiest way for me to connect to that is to sit on my chair and draw birds.
While I do that I feel I can review my wrongs, and appraise my truths in a manner most fitting for a boy with my middle name.
I'm a big fan of the non-photo blue pencils. I go a bit heavier with them than I need to but I enjoy seeing it through the graphite latter on in the night.

I’m a big fan of the non-photo blue pencils. I go a bit heavier with them than I need to but I enjoy seeing it through the graphite latter on in the night.

And like a desert mirage brought to my bedroom it comes to life before my eyes. and now yours thanks to this series of tubes we call the internet.

And like a desert mirage brought to my bedroom it comes to life before my eyes. And now yours thanks to this series of tubes we call the internet.

So again thank you for taking a look at the world from my tree top.

So again thank you for taking a look at the world from my tree top.

Sometimes/everytime.

April 8, 2015 — Leave a comment
Sometimes I write a letter before I know who I’m writing it to.
Sometimes I sit at a desk with a pencil in my hand and just stare at the wall for an hour, then I put the pencil down and walk out of the room while asking myself “what was I doing…?”
Sometimes I write poems about row boats and ponds in northern Illinois
Sometimes I say normal words wrong like bagel and milk.
Sometimes I untie my shoes wrong and they get all knotted up
Sometimes I untie my mind wrong and it gets knotted up too.
Every time though I get them unknotted up.
No direction home.

No direction home.

Holding still.

August 2, 2014 — Leave a comment
That one summer I made all those hawk drawings.
 
Hiding from the drought with a glass of wine and a veil of feathers over her head.
 
She had a halo like a red-tailed hawk.
 
It could make me stop in midsentence.
 
Pulling the car to the curb 236 miles from Los Angeles.

Sketchbook to ward off the rains

April 8, 2014 — Leave a comment
Because the hawks aren’t always in the meadow and the song birds seldom perch on my neighbor’s tree.
So I sit down to piece together my own birds of a feather from pencil, time, and pen.
And sometimes a lightning storm rolls through on a July afternoon. Cooling the air before the fireflies come out and I run to catch them.
If I was locked into a game of perpetual solitaire eye-spy. Then I’m just going to have to carry along a sketch pad to catch whatever falls near me.
It can be my umbrella.
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Don’t think twice,

February 18, 2014 — Leave a comment

It’s all right.

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I like the mornings where the fog makes its way into town. The path of the day is gray.

My favorite sound is of a snowplow driving down my old street at 3am in January.

That’s why I love the trains at the station here at the dead of night.

I came to California for mountains and fair-weather romance.

I was sure about the mountains, the other snuck up on me.

I like to draw birds because I believe doing so preserves my family history.

I don’t mind washing dishes, unless bbq sauce is burned onto something like a cookie sheet.

While I prefer dry socks, I love rain storms.

Books are fun to read then stack, when the stack falls. read ’em again.

I like songs with instruments played by people in them.

Breaking glass is sort of a jerk thing to do.

There are things I’ve learned following old musicians around on tour that nothing else could have taught me.

beautiful, important, childish, historic things.

I like the smell of coffee, but the taste not as much.

The only thing I like to get over my head in, is an Illinois prairie.

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