The Sky Position

I was born in Cedar Rapids Iowa. My early years were lived in the feilds, with bugs, snakes, toads and in the winter I would read. In school, I was difficult and had my desk next to the teachers and most years my parents would come to argue the teachers that I should be allowed to move to the next grade. In 10th grade I was moved from the remedial track and in 11th grade I was allowed to attend Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. My folks were too broke to send me to college so I washed dishes and then started hanging out at cafes talking radical politics. Davis Hooker, (a john henry memorial, . . worms) and Soren Sorensen (currently running for the Senate in Minnesota) and I rode freight trains and hitch-hiked down the river to Lawrence Kansas on a desperate attempt to reach the ocean. My first public events were as an anarchist. In 1991 I participated in the Armory takeover. We occupied and squatted an abandoned National Gaurd Armory that was going to be converted into a prison and for a beautiful summer, made it a homeless shelter. In the day I worked with the drainage committee, trying to dry the Minneapolis Laker's first court, a beautiful parkay floor we planned to use for homeless peoples leaugues games. At night, I dumpstered food and bedding for the guests. We were raided and evicted and now the Armory is an indoor parking lot. I left Minnesota again on freight trains, to Helena Montana, had some trouble with the law and passed three years of probation in St. Paul Minnesota. When I was free, I came to Portland and lived in Laurelhurst Park. I had made an embarrisingly emo and raw book called dot or the green dot book that had a small furry green dot on the cover as the title. At a poetry open mike at Cafe Lena I met Curtis Knapp, Toby Kreidler and Terry Chiasano who asked me to make poems for their journal Rococo Anerca. I then travelled to San Fransisco and was homeless in Berkeley and fed the pigeons at People's Park. I returned to Portland and stayed in the Student Union and in a parked car at Reed College. That year I finished second in a contest to be on the Portland Poetry Slam Team. I was crushed, Curtis was there, we didn't know what to say to each other. After working as a short order cook I got a room in a punk house and then travelled to Philadelphia in love. It is there, in 1997 I began jamming with rob walmart. We made and did not release a tape called sedition. I also worked on if ever then always with Curtis and Micheal Knapp. Rob walmart collected most everything he had made into an album called made in Canada or R O B. I returned to Portland and wrote a chapbook, dot dot. Soon to be re-issued by Marriage with an accompanying cd of it read. In 2006 I toured the country with Adrian Orange of Thanksgiving, reading poems. Rob released the cds kamchatca, boats and pears and In 2007 and then again in 2008 I toured the West Coast with rob walmart, as the vocalist. Rob released the cds contains the hit, live near kboo and tire iron. In 2005, I began collecting the poems that were to become the sky position. That manuscript won the 2007 William Stafford/Donald Hall Oregon Book Award for Poetry. If Ever Then Always, a book of romantic poems, co-written with Curtis Knapp from 1997-1999 is now also available here. I am currently collecting poems for the raccoon and a chapbook of experimental poetry called dot dot dot.