Wide and board
buildings large and unashamed
piled and stacked
to display uniqueness
Dollop coffee
C-train, L-train
Deadheads at museums, bars, zoos and parties
on Lake Shore Drive
Category Archives: Cascadian Byways
poems written in and around Cascadia, often traveling by train or ferry
Nebraska, Annotated
Nebraska
lighting/fireflies
rain/wind
camp on reservoir beach
with a duke boy exit
Lexington
Goodwill
no tacos
icy coffee
Post office with the angry lady
shoulda bought postcards
will make my own
instead, power adapter & salami
flat and wide
roll on by
fade away
California Plateau, Eastward
Winding weary roads
high desert farms of
wind and pistachios
backtrack county roads
beleaguered edges of
parts unfeatured
by geography or films
California’s high plateau
39 degrees dry
oil wells and water machines
rest like dinosaurs
and their empty gas stations
Did you see the shows?”
he sells artish bits
stretched canvas
with stucco and shells
and shellaced print
of steal your face
they lament and encourage Chicago
and we all wish yesterday could last forever
Lead to Vegas 1AM
Sasha dog, Mexican food 114 degrees
road, desert, red rock
Home is the road. Art, crafts, highs and music.
Inlets, Southbound
Hazy morning bound for familiar (once) inlets — Eld, Steamboat, Budd — passing tangled roads & eroded forests towards the smallest town I know to vanish for a spell.
“Do nothing Dave” — I’m not adept at this ‘nothing’ — my life is (I thought) defined by creating & giving.
Generativity is the word I was told by the lady who advised me to float until the current of the story can carry me along once more.
I’ll sew notebooks and walk the old tracks seeking to clear the fog which captured me — for a spell.
I am stronger if I can learn to stop trying so hard. My meditations are full of places I yearn to go by steamship, unforgotten pals due a visit, stories to actually type or say aloud. Projects & projections. This isn’t peace but this monk ain’t going to heaven — or Tibet for that matter.
This painting is: Gravelly Beach, Madrona circa 2005 9″x11″ oil paint and dirt on unstretched (cheap) canvas — feels like re-emerging somehow.
When my bones and bits of soul tell me I’m ready. One day do I wake up aware and brisk? Or does this Dave spend quiet labour editing and contextualizing previous Dave?
To survive, I adapt and surrender hard won vices & leisures.
Sorry, but I’m not sorry for all the decadence I do not share with you now. I’m not able. May we renew and replenish in the future despite I’ve always lived for each fresh dawn to create, share, love, hug, inspire. May I?
I’ll wear a hat so you’ll recognize me as I’ve shaken off erstwhile disguises.
Comfortably Lonely, Cabin Porch
Comfortably lonely, cabin porch
hard back book
foggy overslept hard back chair
backpack hangs on
a wooden peg
empty
but for deja vu
trembling hands
loosening clothes
fingers slipping
underside the clasp
coarse canvas dream
and well oiled leather boots
with high arches
moving away from here
even before painting
the rooms onto a circus tent
the tall poles cantilevered
and kids with summer suntan lines
on open feet
saguaro sunset scenery
flash by in a clackety-thwack 16mm print
Grandpa coughing, me
jotting down unessentials,
collecting pottery along the way
the movement is key i recollect
while stopping still and
tucking my boots
under a hearty mantle
of foreboding calm
One Way These Tracks
One way these tracks
run directly into the elevator
then somehow into Mt. Hood
turning east
stopped by a wooden fence
with a dam behind
Columbia daunted
but roiling
stunted but strong yet
regressed to measures, velocity
and potential
the water spreads thinner then gold
every fiefdom wants its piece to bridge,
tame and dam
rocks and measurements
observe the folly
silt builds behind
water cools ahead
moving
beyond memories
of what wasn’t left behind
of drowned villages
and artifacts uncovered
entombed and enshrined
only the tugboats come close
barge drifting
silos wait
trains slip past
Columbia slows
Coastal Starlight 2 hours late
Coastal Starlight
2 hours late
dropped into darkness
late after waiting
i could wait until tomorrow
but i’m ready to leave today
Nine dollars for small bottle
of California merlot
drinking into blackness
cabin eerie tranquil
knowing the commotion
inches below
Mountain Lake, Cerulean You
Mtn lake
deep and pure
devious me
and cerulean you
Sky-blue Trepidation
Sky blue trepidation
low as bricks
soft as flakes
My brother called
something about
quitting jobs
remembering jobs
remembering summertimes
building log houses
muggy days
broke by coral seas
sanddunes stretch
past the yellow cedars
jump again into sento
soaking hot
feeling low
straggling past
the circumstance
Sweetzer Road
Sweetzer Rd is
admittedly devoid
just wandering cows
and rattlesnakes
when you stop here
in roadside shade
there’s no chance
that you’ll miss the town