It's like slow motion,
Much like a train derailing,
You can't bring yourself to look away,
As the fist flies toward your face.

As soon as the foreign limb makes contact  with your cheek,
It seems like someone pressed the fast forward button,
Because you seem to retaliate immediately,
Over and over,
As more blows are returned to your head and sides.

You throw your weight forward,
Catching them off balance as they were on their heels,
Wrapping them up around the midsection in a picture perfect tackle.

You both go flying out the front door and into the street,
Both struggling to your feet,
Both you and your opponent's friends pull each other apart,
And make haste to leave before the cops arrive.

Where would you be,
If you were the perfect you that you could be for a day?
What would you do?

Would you try and give your life the theoretical "boost" so to speak?
Maybe by getting ahead of a backlog you've been trying to get past at work,
Or by making an important life choice.

Maybe you'd go and try something new,
To see the viability of possible choices.

Or maybe you'd not change a thing,
For you've been the best you that you could be the whole time.

Sometimes funny,
Sometimes terrifying,
Sometimes mysterious,
Something nice.

Something remembered,
Something forgotten,
Something changed,
Something repeated.

Wake up.

Take a breath,
A deep, lung filling breath,
Exhale,
And realize that you are one breath closer to the end of your time here on this planet.
To some there is a life after this,
At least I hope so,
And to others we are just an ember dying in the air,
Just a second or two of existence in the grand scheme of it all,
And all we have left to mark our time is by the deeds we've committed,
Our mark on history.

I had a dream,
Where I was on top of a mountain,
Staring at the sunset, and its effect on the shadows in the valley,
An older man was there,
We hadn't needed words,
For we already knew what the other had to say.

I've been traveling,
Trying to return to my roots,
So return I did,
Returned to the woods,
That carpet the mountains of the Appalachian.

Up the mountains I climbed,
An old rifle slung across my back,
Boonie cap keeping eyes free from the harsh glare of the sun as it filters through the canopy above
Trying to find on the mountain that I've been lacking in the North..

Wildlife is active all around,
A breeze is flowing up the mountain,
Whisking the settling heat up and past the peak,
My footfalls soft and sure.
I come across old trails I haven't seen in years,
Mostly washed away and rendered impassible.
On the eastern face I find the remnants of a forest fire.
The field that once held nothing but cinders littered with healthy saplings,
Already taller than I,
New deer trails and bedding areas,
The old ones I discover to be abandoned and the new roost of varmint.

It finally strikes me,
As I descend off of the old mountain,
The truth of what it was I lacked,
I fell into the trap that ensnare many a men down in the South.

The trap that the Mountains lay,
From the Adirondacks to the Allegheny,
Of being a timeless place,
Where you are unplugged from the rest of the world,
And everything is simpler,
It's a trap that had not chains to wrap around arms and legs,
But to encase around the mind.

It is easier to leave than last time,
For I know I shall return,
To this little retreat,
In the Daniel Boone National Forest.

I stare,
The outsider looking in.

******* comment,
Or a practiced defence?

Cigarette slowly shrinking,
Ember glowing bright.

Out of options,
Out of time.

Walls closing in,
Creeping like vines.

Shotglass is full,
unlike the bottle.

It was a new day,
As I suited up for battle,
A new campaign,
Something sure to leave the uninitiated rattled.

A polo shirt to defend against the piercing stares of haughty individuals,
A thermos of coffee,
To brain the sandman with when he arrived with reinforcements mid morning,
Neatly combed hair to camouflage myself as just another drone,
Plucking away and invisible to predators.

As I sit down at my desk
I take a look out the window at the rain,
And imagine I was out in it,
For the rain is much more enjoyable.

But fear not,
I still have my secret weapon,
Devastating to the enemies of fun.
A power so great it will ensure that I will never fully succumb to the forces of drudgery.


I raise my pantleg a bit to take a peek at my crazy socks,
Instantly making my day better