Clockwork

Dear Friend,

Welcome to my small corner of the world. We have been headed toward each other for our entire lives. My name is Christian. I am here for you, please stay awhile.

I’m a 29 year-old writer living in Pennsylvania. Poetry is my life. I always have a notebook with me so I can write, even in the middle of a crowded street. I love reading at open mics, even though I’m normally shy and quiet.

My work is inspired by urban exploring, hiking, religion and social justice. My goal is to write poetry for the working class and other marginalized groups. I also write for my hometown, which is a steel town in Pennsylvania. Many of the poems in Keystones, my first published collection of poetry, focus on the people and landscapes of that city.

I’m a listener. I like to hear what people have to say about everything from world religions to the scientific principles that create black holes. If you are in the neighborhood, and you would like to have a conversation, feel free to send me a message. I’ll be here for you.





A few fun facts:

Exploring abandoned buildings is one of my favorite pastimes.

I took the cover photographs for Keystones while I was urban exploring in Pennsylvania. The front cover is the site of an old blast furnace; the back is of a decommissioned train bridge.

I feel most alive when I’m hiking through the woods, building campfires, writing, and exploring abandoned buildings.

I regularly practice transcendental meditation.

Baseball is my favorite sport in the world.

I was an AmriCorps scholar in 2011-2012 and I performed over 300 hours of service that year.

In January 2012 I helped rebuild homes with the Lend a Hand group in Smithville Mississippi.

During the first two years of college, I was on the school mock trial team.
My second year I was a team captain and lead attorney for the defense in a DUI homicide trial.

I greatly enjoy poetry, tea, and gardening.

I love all sorts of music, but heavy metal is my favorite by far.

I’m the oldest of six siblings.

I am rusty around the edges, a work in progress, and I’m attempting to make the ashes of my life mean something.

With love and good faith,

-Christian



I will draw thorns from your feet.
We will walk the White Path of Life together.
Like a brother of my own blood,
I will love you.
I will wipe tears from your eyes.
When you are sad,
I will put your aching heart to rest.

-Cherokee Traveler's Greeting







"Listen to many, speak to few.
-William Shakespeare

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
-Edgar Allan Poe

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
-Edgar Allan Poe

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."

-Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father's care.
-William Penn

Knowledge is a polite word for dead, but not buried, imagination"
-e.e. cummings

"We build with our hands what we have in our hearts." -August Burns Red from the song "Empire"

"The great religions are ships, poets are the life boats. -Hafiz

“In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.”
—Denise Levertov

"Love those who yearn for the impossible."
-Johann Wolfgange von Gothe

"Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a writer retire?"
-Ernest Hemingway

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -Ray Bradbury

"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.” -Shantideva

I like to imagine that paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jose Luis Borges

the good exercise compassion by making the case of others their own,

-Hindu proverb

"I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch."
-Anne Sexton

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one. (Indira Gandhi)

For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live.
(Maynard J. Keenan)



Favorite Poetry Collections:

--Tomas Transtromer: The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems

--Slow Lightning: Edwardo C. Corral

--Delights & Shadows: Ted Kooser

--Life on Mars: Tracy K. Smith

--Behind my Eyes: Li-Young Lee

--Winter Morning Walks: Ted Kooser

--Horoscopes for the Dead: Billy Collins

--Without: Donald Hall

--Polo Sur/South Pole: Maria Teresa Ogliastri

--Fire to Fire: Mark Doty

--The Prophet: Khalil Gibran

Story telling is my life, and I have many to tell.