Tell me more about you as a poet and all of your passions?

“I can be a hard person to get to know. I try not to speak in absolutes, about myself or others. It feels counterproductive in a world where we're fighting for our lives against the quantification and auctioning off of our souls on behalf of systems we've been gaslit into mangling our own humanity to better fit. In other words, what I've been calling "spiritual warfare".

I'm moody, and pensive. A perfectionist. I've been told that I have a mean resting bitch face. I've developed stress tourettes. But I still catch myself crying laughing. I'm often overwhelmed with joy and awe at the sight of a friend. My dog licking my face isn't a bother, sometimes I let him. I want to understand how these parts of me can coexist so easily in a world that that doesn't cultivate for nuance, in favor of the increasingly dull. Where can us children play in the woods and scrape our knees and crash through puddles when they're being paved over on behalf of grey mcmansions (coffins) in the countryside and 4 story stilt homes with plastic brick facades on the same city blocks that culture was sprouting from?

I read most of Stephen King's work before twenty. My education in manhood came from Wendell Berry. I didn't read Bukowski until I was twenty eight (wouldn't have understood him earlier anyway). I like non-fiction books about agriculture. I thought philosophy was important business until I read the masters. AI isn't an existential threat, but AI on a dead planet with nothing to do but look at us certainly is. Walden changed my life. I've spent so much time thinking and smoking tobacco that my gums are receding. I'm a beekeeper. I still work a day job. I like Ted Kascinszki and Jesus Christ. I'd rather be gardening or "yarming" (yard-farmin') than writing and touring and recording music but somehow I still find time for all of it. Like a dog on a leash. I'm not famous for it... but specialization is dull anyway. And that's war, I guess. The first casualty was my sense of self and certainty. So I try not to speak in absolutes. It's hard to tell you who I am when what I am is what I do. Whew.

I wrote "Poems From The End" in a single night. One bad show at the worst (and best) venue in Nashville. I sat on the couch in the back by the bar and rattled it off between soundcheck and load out. Work at 3am looming over me... my frustrations poured into my notebook, like a long sigh. Finding joy and humor in that space felt like a triumph. Afterwards, through traveling and continuing to write I began to see the parallels in theme all around. In the traffic, in Chicago, in the suburbs, the long days at work, jaunts with my dog. So it became "Poems From The End & More". And the people who were with me through it all! Last Man In The Lounge was for them. When you're tired, go home, I'll be the last in the lounge... I'll stay behind. I think it has something to do with becoming a man. Love in action, despite all this. It was the end of a long day and a long thought.”