Today, I mistook a piece of sushi for an old philosopher.

Oh my God, I love the dirt. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. I am crying because I love the dirt so much.

I frittered away the afternoon apologizing to the cows.

Here in Eastern Washington, we like our liquor and our weapons concealed.

I feel like the neighbor’s chickens are heckling me.

Hayden smells like one part puppy, one part pineapple chunk, one part grandma, and one part cheese cracker.

My dog wants a dog. This is just like the time my robot wanted a robot.

Dogs: Lots of energy in the morning, lazy most of the day, excitable in the evening, lazy again until bedtime, wild burst of energy right at bedtime, sound asleep until morning. Me: Lots of energy in the morning, lazy most of the day, excitable in the evening, lazy again until bedtime, wild burst of energy right at bedtime, sound asleep until morning.

It makes me sad to think that when I die, there will be nobody left on this earth who remembers, loves and misses my father. I want to live a long life so my love for him will remain in my heart as long as possible.

Digging in the dirt turns me into an emotional, fragile weirdo.

The people in the weekend rental next door are being loud, so I am playing theremin music to drown them out.

Sometimes I am not somewhere until I am no longer there.

I can tell this day is going to be bigger than me, and that’s a good feeling.

I wake today with an awareness that we are not one country. We are many, with many hearts and minds. And some of those minds are closed, some of those hearts shut down.

We talk a lot about keeping our minds busy, but we also need to work at keeping our hearts busy.

When someone starts threatening you, you know you’re onto something that matters. Nobody makes threats unless there’s something to be lost, exposed or both.

What my new and old neighborhoods have in common: children’s laughter, kindness and love.

I found my hair twin at Walmart, which tells you a lot about my hair.

The next time I want to cast aspersions, I will cast a handful of wildflower seeds instead.

Today I am grateful for the kindness of our neighbors, the beauty of the earth and sky, and for sharing a home with a man and a dog I deeply love.

We rarely find happiness in the pursuit of what we think will make us happy.

My heart lives in the past. My mind lives in the future. It is only my soul that lives in the present.

Be the change you want to see in yourself.

You can’t replace yesterday’s lost nutrients today.

I am a delicate balance of Benadryl and caffeine.

I don’t like Walla Walla because I fit in; I like it precisely because I don’t fit in.

The challenge is to think with our hearts and feel with our minds.

If I can love one being as much as I do, imagine my capacity for loving the entire world of beings.

My first language is silence.

The greatest disappointment of my life thus far is learning that we are as isolated in our joy as we are in our sorrow.

Sometimes the kindness thing we can do for one another is remain silent.

I write poems so people I love can come with me into places and experiences I love.

There is a difference between bringing people you love along with you in a poem and trying to do so in real life. The former is improbable; the latter impossible.

Everything said publicly is now said through indirection, secretly—through gestures and nods.

Eternity isn’t something we are deluded into believing. It’s something that, over the course of our lives, we are disciplined out of believing.

The End of Times is perhaps the only way we can justify leaving something as beautiful as the earth behind. Why not shift the responsibility for that misfortune to God? We need a great story to justify such a great loss.

The truth is, without knowing it, I used to admit only the concept of a God who wanted us all to be rich. And because so many of us are poor, I didn’t think there could be a God. That’s how deeply rooted capitalism is within me. That’s how—even though I am the ninety-nine percent, I do the work of the one percent—the work of striving, of failing, of blaming the failures of a system on myself and others who don’t control that system or even understand its inner workings, of blaming God for not being a capitalist who works by way of greed and exclusion.

I had no life before poetry. I had nothing. I was lost.

In my case, it doesn’t matter how gifted the life is. Without poetry, it’s impossible to see the gifts—the way a frog will die even if surrounded by flies, if those flies are not moving. The frog is simply not programmed to “see” flies that don’t move. Poetry, for me, makes things move, sets the gifts of the world, the gift of the world itself, in motion.

Things to do in Walla Walla: 1. Write a book of poems, 2. Grow out your hair.

I think the best marriage in a poem would be Charles Wright and Steven Wright.

Thinking for yourself is always a good thing. Thinking for someone else is never a good thing.

I like the letters to the editor in the local paper. They help me figure out who to avoid.

Tonight as I left the Farm Labor Home, one of the kids I teach ran behind my car, waving goodbye to me under the waxing gibbous moon.

Before we talk about sharing wealth, we need to ask ourselves where that wealth came from—who suffered or died, what lands and habitats were stolen, destroyed or altered beyond recognition—for that wealth to have been amassed in the first place. I don’t know about you, but there is wealth in this country, in this world, that I don’t want any part of.

Removing producers from this country—largely situating workers overseas, over there, beyond our boundaries—also removes the very body that could make a difference, that could rise up and make a difference.

I just misread While people often post photos of daily minutiae such as food as White people often post photos of daily minutiae such as food.

Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani says his compositions exist in “ma time.” Maybe I am living in ma time now.

All my poems are love poems for the poets whose poems I love.

I’ve woken again to a great love.

Language is always going to be taken hostage by those who choose to do the worst with it. If we give up on it, on language, on its safe return, we might as well give up on ourselves—because that’s what the surrender amounts to.

If dogs are a reflection of their owners, then I must be awesome.

We talk a lot about audience, but what about anti-audience—the readers we want to dislike our work? The ones we write not for, but against?

I used to think Richard Hugo was hardcore for driving to his “triggering towns” to find his writing. But I am way more hardcore: I moved to my triggering town. But I didn’t just find my writing here. I found myself. I found faith. I found love and its vastness. And I found my way back to land.

I am not obsessive-compulsive. I am expressive-compulsive.

As soon as you fill someone else’s heart with the love that you feel, you have been reincarnated in that person.

Today, we saw the edge of a controlled burn, red flames against char.

Today in Dayton, pieces of charred wheat fell from the sky, thin as paper, dark as night.

Hanford joke: The waste is a terrible thing to mind.

I believe the land wishes it could talk, and I believe it speaks through us if we let it.

Today, the sun comes and goes like a thought never quite completed. (Or a lover always hurrying away to be with anyone but you.)

What I feel when I read poems is something like love—a waterfall suddenly inside me, every drop longing for the source which brought it into being, longing for the great, ordinary mind that saw fit to put those words on the page.

Offered today on the Walla Walla Freecycle list: A bag full of UNUSED condoms.

Our dog has informed us that her new nickname is Nom Chompsky. 

Nom Chompsky says: You never need an argument for the use of peanut butter, you need an argument against it. 

Nom Chompsky says: Unlimited use of peanut butter has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Nom Chompsky. 

Nom Chompsky says: You don’t get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms with a mouth full of peanut butter.

Those who are exceptional are not the gifted; they are the gift.

Meditation without proper form is merely breathing. Poetry without proper form is merely prose.

Time is different out here. I can’t keep up with anyone, let alone who I was trying to be.

Just misread Fun with Homophones as Fun with Homophobes.

I think I might be done with Facebook.

Being (mostly) inactive on Facebook for the past week has taught me nothing about my relationship with Facebook. It has, however, given me time to think about my relationship with my work, my writing, my spirituality, and even my life. It’s amazing what emerges when we don’t fill every available moment with something, with anything, that keeps us from fully thinking and feeling.

Instead of the option that allows users to omit “Games” their friends play, we should have the option of omitting “Head Games” our friends play.

I might not be able to make a living here, but I can certainly make a life here. That’s the beauty of this place, the beauty and the wonder of it.

When a trapdoor closes, an actual door opens.

Stop trading what you have for what you want.

I’ve lost my will to die.

For a long time, I thought I was Hindemith, but it turns out I am Satie.

Poetry shouldn’t explain anything. It should explain everything.

The best advice my mother ever gave me was, Don’t step in shit. The second-best advice she ever gave me was, Don’t touch a dog on the butt.

This town is all ears and mouths.

I am 819 words into this essay, and I forgot the point I am trying to make.

Last night I dreamed your name meant, Rub cheese all over your throat and mouth.

Last night I dreamed your name meant, Paint a beehive automotive white and wear it like a lampshade on your head.

Last night I dreamed your name meant, Be a skull that roaches enter through the eye sockets.

For me, the key to figuring out what to say to adults was figuring out what to say to children.

I am a force. A weak force, like a potato battery, but still a force.

One year. One open heart. Boom. Starts now.

Sometimes we don’t have room for love. We have to make room.

I’ve never been one to follow paths. Instead, I build them.

Sometimes we have to be erased to be redrawn.

For me, poetry is more about understanding than aesthetics.

Dyslexia: A label created by people who don’t understand dyslexia.

I long for the land in rural areas and the people in urban areas.

I love therefore I am.

What I’m saying is that Eastern Washington is an expression of human existence, really, in the landscape. — Dana Guthrie Martin, in a voice mail to Andre Tan dated Jan. 23, 2011

More on Eastern Washington: You feel something strange about your existence and your safety, out here, but it’s also quite beautiful. And I really think that’s the way life is. — Dana Guthrie Martin, in a voice mail to Andre Tan dated Jan. 23, 2011

There are only a few important things to say. That’s why people who say only important things tend to repeat themselves.

Found book title: CB Talk for Goodbye.

I’m 40 years old. Time to stop acting like a cheerleader and simply act like a leader.

I’ve decided to write poems that people can understand. Regular people, not just poet-people.

One year ago on Facebook, I wrote: If I started talking about love and light and peace and healing, would that freak you out?

Handwritten sign posted in neighbor’s yard: Pick up after your dog or he/she might get shot.

The world is full of what you believe it is full of.

I am finally learning what it means to see everything and everyone as a teacher.

T-shirt idea: Your past is not my present.

There’s a pillow moving all around in the bedroom. I suspect there’s a dog under it.

Morning in Walla Walla: 4th Avenue is alive with horses.

Aside from not representing faces with accuracy, painting was an area of strength for him. — hypothetical neuropsychological evaluation of Picasso

Life occurs in an abscess, in our absence, in our backwards mess.

Pictures of hamsters really are hit or miss, aren’t they.

I think more poets should keep their poetry open and their mouths shut.

From the Walla Walla Freecycle list: We are in need of sand, a trampoline and a guinea pig.

I always thought I was Eurydice, the one others look back at. Turns out, I am Orpheus, the one looking back.

My life is all Junes and Januaries.

I came up with a classification system for forms of intelligence last night in a dream: inherent/automatic, enforced/shaped, developed/honed, atrophied, symptomatic and received.

In the end, remaining open might be all that matters.

I washed my dog. I love my dog.

When I was young, a small town swallowed me whole. Now, I can swallow a small town whole.

Writing a poem is like walking a dog: It stops a lot when you want it to keep going, and if you’re not careful it will shit on your feet.

We have to stop assuming God is a capitalist who wants us all the be rich.

Go froth and conquer.

I am convinced we are less interested in saying something original than in saying something that has origins.

This poet generates a simple, random sentence.

One of the criteria I had for culling my Facebook contacts this morning was: If I saw you in public, would I hide from you? If I answered no to that question, you are still here.

I just misread the phrase Candid Camera as Candida Camera.

I derive my power in part from the fact that you don’t know what I am capable of, but I do know what you are capable of.

Weird things poets say: You’re not allowed to have an original voice unless we know who you are.

While editing, I misread edit as idiot.

Finally, I understand why I turn to poets.

From the Walla Walla Freecycle list: Looking for bottom half of mannequin or above the shoulders.

I’m so unsettled I feel like a Henry Darger painting.

There are two sides to me: one dark, one darker.

So much about religious interpretation seems to be about making sure women don’t give men a hard on.

Meditation realization of the day: Time does not exist in order for me to be productive.

Poems are like orgasms: never as good as we imagine they will be.

Your ignorance is not my bliss.