California Prayer & Other Poems 2010-2016

The road trip is the prayer. California Prayer conveys the beauty of a false paradise one we acknowledge is imperfect but a finer place than the one we accept. Though applied here in a secular frame a prayer is always honest. Pursuing true love deliverance from addiction and the crossroads of identity and place perch on the fingertips and tongue of the poems within. Like a road trip a prayer is not conceived by a preacher or a church - it is something personal and comforting...and while harmless is ultimately futile. But same as a journey with a destination but no map something is learned something is answered with no conceivable source. The road trip is the prayer. The poems in Other Poems 2010-2016 represent various styles and experiments in both experiencing and studying the importance of family history identity abstract and surreal memory and the timelessness of travel. They wind through a pivotal period of the author's life attempting to reveal his authenticity as poet and human-being and how they intersect.