A Different Story

I've always been filled with the urge to become an eco-terrorist. Was I alone on this one? To just live in hammocks, high up in the canopy, spiking trees, and cutting the fuel lines of bulldozers? Steal the explosives that rip apart the unique American terrain and use them to destroy the constructs that dry it up? Dismantle the surveyor's markings and hide my tracks in the moonlight? ...Hayduke would have been with me.
     So would have Hawkins.
     He was always with me for anything.
     Don't get me wrong on this one. The kid was a great friend and I would have protected him to both of our deaths. That was the problem. No matter how either of us felt, we were side by side.
     I guess that's really why we ended up together. Here.
     We had plotted it for some time. We had prepared, planned, prepped, even got down to physical training so we could outrun our adversaries if the incident arose. Neither of us had been quick enough for what we ended up dealing with.
     We were together, living in the beautiful and majestic American southwest. We grew tired of the atrocities that we saw impact the landscape that had been cultivated over eons and had just started to discuss doing something about it. We even followed Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang and started to plant strategic caches and plot out attacks against key points in the terrain.
     Honestly, most of it was just a loud, drunken chaos of he and I yelling at each other over the music at whatever bar we had picked out that evening. Aside from the caches and our newly acquired desire to exercise, each night after we had worked out, anyone in our town could find us at the bar. The cops in town had even grown akin to shouting at us from their patrol cars as we harassed the college students for never working for their keep.
     This was our regular routine.
     Until that night. That night where we finally left to enact one of our plans.
     It was a small one.  They had been building a new road up the side of the mountain. It would connect a suburb to the tiny downtown hub where we lived. A connection, though, that would change the economy and allow for a new mining industry to grow that had been started near the suburb. We were on our way to just pull out the surveyor's markings when we ran into him.
     He was our town's newest criminal. A serial rapist. His picture had just been posted about town earlier that week. That's not to say the situation wasn't a dead giveaway. He was on top of his newest victim.
     Hawkins ran up on him. I knew it wouldn't go well, he was a small framed man. He was definitely a scrapper but no match for the bastard, twice his size, that he ran towards. Nonetheless, Hawkins caught him off guard and kicked him right in his chest.
     He fell of of the poor woman with an exhale of air.
     It didn't take him long before he pounced from the ground on top of Hawkins and started to pummel him in the chest.
     I felt for my knife on my hip. I had never used it before for anything but just skinning animals so as soon as I touched it, my conscience told me to leave it rest. I ran in and tackled the bastard into a puddle in the alley.
     He and I were evenly matched. Same size. Same build. I think the difference that mattered was that I had grown up with an older brother, and Chuck liked to pick fights with me.
     He swung at me. One. Two. Three times. The first and last connected with either side of my jaw. Luckily, that had always been Chuck's favorite move in a fight.
     I shrugged off the blows like they were mere glances of a dagger against my iron shield and came in on top of him. My hands were clenched together and came down on his nose with the meat of my palms. I knew immediately that I had entirely separated his nose from his face as blood spurted all over my pants.
     His surge of adrenaline must have kicked in as he tossed me away like a doll. I hit the ground on the opposite side of the alley and my head bashed against the back door of a pizzeria.
     As he came running at me, Hawkins came in for a tackle like he was the game-winning linebacker and stole the bastards breath from him again. Hawkins stayed on top of him this time.
     Hawkins had found a sizable rock in the alley and began to use it as a fist pack.
     I joined in with swift kicks to the rib cage from my steel toed boots.
     We would have him now. We would pummel the life out of the bastard and he would go to jail to receive the same he had felt so righteous about doling out in the months prior to our midnight rendezvous.
     After a moment, Hawkins stood up and joined me. The fight had turned into a right proper romp. We made blood blisters of waffle iron markings in his forehead as our Doc Martens stomped down on his face. It was after that blissful moment of blood and boots that I kicked him in the ass and he flipped onto his hands and knees.
     I'm still not sure how he did it but he survived the beating with enough wits about him to scamper into the bushes on his hands and knees. The only thing I can surmise now is that it was the red and blue lights that flickered down the alley that had scared the pathetic excuse for a man off and into the darkness that shrouded the bushes.
     The cops came in on us fast. From both sides of the alley too. We were trapped. Not worried.
     The first cop jumped out and cuffed us immediately.
     We had been expecting as much. To go to jail as the two guys that kicked the ass of the serial rapist, that was something we had been willing to do. The ideals of our eco-terrorism had been long forgotten as we sat in the back of the squad car and waited for the cop to pop in and ask us how it felt to be the first people to pummel that bastard's face.
     When he finally came in, we couldn't believe our ears.
     "You two are under arrest for the rape and murder of this poor bitch in the body bag right over there. What the fuck do you two bastards have to say for yourselves?"
     We were too worried and dumbfounded to even say a word. So he carted us off to jail as the real bastard probably laughed at us from the bushes he had hidden behind.
     I'll make a really long story shorter. We ended up with a public attorney. The swine didn't do us a lick of good. He was caught up in the same hype we had been that night that we attacked the bastard and assumed we were just a couple more low lives that drifted in to ruin his hometown.
     He did absolutely nothing to help us and everything he could to convict us. The blood on my pants was turned into the remnants of my befouling of that poor young woman and Hawkins' bruises in his chest had been inflicted upon him as the woman fought back against his restraining arms.
     A week later, while the trial was still going on, the bastard's body turned up dead in the bushes he had crawled towards. We were charged with his murder and stories were concocted of how we had actually started a raping gang and he had threatened to turn us in and we tried to frame him on that night.
     Now we sit in prison. Our faces smashed against the bars. I day dream of our caches and plans to destroy corporate America's controls on the beautiful backcountry destinations that had been sworn to being protection areas. Hawkins dreaming of 100 proof whiskeys and craft beers. Neither of us regretting killing that bastard ass rapist that never had a chance to do it again.

Monsoon Season

The cliffs are painted
     with the thousand shades of red
     that dance within a campfire.
Their climbs protrude from
     the fresh green junipers,
     sage brushes and grasses,
     like red waves over a green sea.
The hawks circle in the sky
     like gulls above the ocean,
     motionless and waiting for their chance.
In the distance,
     the clouds are gray,
     a dark, smokey shade,
     they drop their waters
     and hide the red waves behind them.
The desert is not arid and lifeless this year.
It breathes with the life of the ocean
     and endures its scars.

Divided

Divide your time between work and life.
What's the difference?
Every day is one step closer.
Like the glow on the floor,
Cracked through an open blind,
It all has to fade away.
The same song on repeat
you find new meaning each time it plays.