He first shared this poem, when it was only the first part, on February 27, 2025. He sent it to the volunteer services lead with a request to help him find welcome center placements at other parks on the coast.
Six days later the park manager used it at the picnic table to imply he had feelings for the volunteer services lead, his male supervisor (19:49, 36:20). He said no. Then, with a half laugh, no again, as the implication registered. When he offered to explain the poem: “I don’t necessarily need explanation for that” (37:41). He explained it anyway (37:52): he loved his time in the welcome center, he was trying to find the same work at other parks on the coast, he had asked the volunteer services lead to contact them for him, and he wanted the volunteer services lead to know how much it meant to him to be on the coast. “That poem is about what brought me here.”
Twenty days after that, on the recorded call of March 25, Program Manager Allison Watson used it again. She opened by telling him the dismissal was “not going to be overturned” (2:38). Then she ambushed him: nine minutes of claims from unnamed sources (4:26, 6:54, 8:18), and then the poem (11:19). He told her it had context, and that he had explained it at the picnic table (11:46). She asked again (11:57). He told her again what it was for (12:09): he wanted the volunteer services lead to understand how much it meant to him to be on the coast. “It’s just a poem” (13:01). Ten seconds of silence, as she regained her footing. The next day she excluded him permanently from every state parks volunteer program.
On March 5, 2026, the anniversary of the picnic table meeting, he sent the first part to the volunteer services lead, the park supervisor, the park manager, Program Manager Allison Watson, Deputy Director J.R. Collier, Interim Director Stefanie Coons, Director Lisa Sumption, the OPRD Commissioners, and Governor Kotek. They had trespassed onto his interior and colonized it with a false narrative, both directly and in a Word document the program manager spent a year privately editing, making dozens of revisions over hours of writing, which he would not see until Oregon State Police produced a copy of it. The act was a reclamation, and it was what led him to write the second part, which he kept private. That was the end of it, until the third part came seven months later and made the three a triptych. Only then did he release the second.
Little did he know, as he sent the poem, what they had set in motion two days prior.
On March 3, 2026, he wrote Deputy Director J.R. Collier. It was the last door he was holding open for the man and he told him as much. He ended with refusal: “You will not bury this.” Collier’s response was to reach for borrowed power. Within hours, a man he has never met or corresponded with, using a title meant to smuggle the entire act, Oregon State Parks’ Emergency Manager Jamen Lee, wrote to the press captain at Oregon State Police. Lee did not allege a crime or a threat. He sent the other man a link to this archive and invoked his Director and the Governor as justification. That email made him a target of the state government’s police power.
He knows the label waiting for the word sovereignty: “sovereign citizen.” Nothing he has ever said points there. Attaching that meaning to his words is the act they have already performed twice. Sovereignty, for him, is not a position on the law. It is the plain fact that no one else speaks to his interior: not to what he feels, not to what he means, not to what he intends. Each time they have tried, the record shows it, and it is this precise boundary they continue to trespass.
He is the one asking them to follow the law. Whoever calls the third part an escalation is weaponizing it a third time. And still it’s just a poem.
I
December 30, 2024
Cape Blanco
I am the wind’s quiet rebellion,
a sovereign force wrapped in salt spray and intuition,
moving along edges where maps forget to breathe.
My home, a sanctuary on wheels,
traces the contours of cliffs and the pull of the Pacific’s whisper.
I wake with the lighthouses—
their beams cutting truths into the dark,
my truths, sharp as sea glass
but held gently in the palm of the present.
I speak to That Thing,
the one with no name,
the one that churns inside the waves and the void of my chest,
both wild and constant—
both teacher and terrain.
I carry storms in my pocket,
their gusts tearing through yesterday’s doubts,
their rain washing my fears into fertile ground.
And if I find myself broken down on the 101,
it will be a baptism in asphalt and ocean spray,
another chapter where the wind and I rewrite the rules.
Yes, I long for another sovereign soul,
a man with eyes like embers,
who laughs at chaos but holds it tenderly.
Someone who sees me not as a tangle to untie
but a current to dive into.
We’d carry storms together,
building lighthouses in the spaces between us.
Until then, I’ll wander.
Each step a communion,
each gust a guide,
each unmarked cove a mirror.
I am not afraid of the dark,
only of forgetting how to love it.
II
March 6, 2026
Siltcoos
I have walked the edges where maps forget to breathe
and found them breathing.
I have stood at the table where they built the case against me
and watched them build it wrong.
I have said okay into a recording
after she hung up
and meant: I know exactly what comes next.
I am not what they needed me to be.
Confused. Destabilized. Processing.
I am what I was before they knew my name.
Sovereign. Documented. Still here.
They handed me a title.
Former Oregon State Parks Volunteer.
I put it under every letter now.
Their words.
My signature.
Permanent.
The logbook had no poems.
I took pictures of every page.
Before they knew they would lie about it.
That is how I move through the world.
Already ready.
Already three moves ahead.
Already saying okay before the call ends.
That Thing has a name now.
Cascadia.
The fault beneath the coast I chose anyway.
The risk I understood completely and said yes to.
Because the Pacific doesn't ask permission
and neither do I.
I have walked to the Siltcoos at the end of the day