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.

Flames of Discontent

I'll burn down every city.
Just move into the woods.
Darwin knew best.
I'll teach the world to be true,
They'll see what responsibility
Really means.

Provide your food,
Hunt,
Trap
And forage.
Fight for your water.
Truly nomadic,
Always on the move.
Following food,
Water,
Weather.

Most of the savages,
Claimed civil by society,
Will die.

Me and mine,
We,
We will make it.
Through the sunshine,
Monsoons and snowfall.
We will become
The truest of generations.
Providing no more dishonesty
Based on fear.
No more greed
Based off this selfish social structure

We will be together,
Selflessly providing for one another
And without the bother of
All of this
Greed
Hate
Selfishness
And suffering

The Westbound Train

The Westbound Train
My grandmother died.
     It was not too long ago but I haven't seen her in over a year. If you wanted to be pedantic, I haven't really seen here since I was a teenager. Nobody in my family had really seen Granny since then either. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's before I'd grow into the man I am today.
     Granny would never know me ever again.
     The image she held onto of me, was a young twelve year old, boy, not the pierced and tattoo covered freak she had only seen at sideshows while growing up in Kentucky. Inevitably, I scared the living daylights out of my grandmother for years, just by showing up. Then I would remind her who I was, only to get a, "what happened?!"
     She really was a sweet woman though. Not a mean bone in her body. Alzheimer's Disease has a pretty serious impact on the personality of its victims though. Unfortunately, Granny went from the sweetheart she was, to a rugged woman ready to run away or gun you down with words. She was a sweet old woman that took care of me when I was sick, taught me to sew and sat and laughed as Pa and I would try to play bluegrass music on a banjo and juice harp. She would bake biscuits with hot chocolate pudding drizzled over top of them for my cousins and I regularly. She liked to call it biscuits and chocolate gravy. All these memories of her would flash through my head and I couldn't stand the look of fear on her face every time I saw her or the disgruntled remarks to all of us.
     It really made family gatherings hard.

     It was actually so hard for me that I even hid away from my extended family.

     She left the struggles of this shiftless and tragic world at the break of the new year.

     Now, I've never been much for religion and never once called myself agnostic either. Plain and simple, I don't believe in any god, or gods for that matter. There is, however, an unexplainable connection that exists between humanity, our world and our universe. I've never cared for an explanation, scientists saying we are all derived from cosmic star dust has always been good enough for me. The power of the human mind is also far beyond our grasp and this has always forced me to feel if you believe in heaven or hell, you will create one for your soul to move on to after death. 

     She would live free of Alzheimer's once again in the heaven she has created.

     I didn't come to this conclusion on religion by luck. I researched. I went to all different kinds of churches and read my fair share of holy books. A fairly common thing I came across was the belief that the spirit will take hold in an animal. The animal changes with each specific group of people but a pretty common one would be crows and ravens. I have to say that this has always been a pretty far off concept to me but one fact holds true: since my grandmother has passed, I've been greeted each morning by a raven in my yard.