FREEDOM'S STAIN

....I awoke this morning, happy and grateful and all that . it may surprise that I , a man doomed to roam the wasted miles of strokeland , always awaken to beauty , today a gorgeous sun has found a way past the curtain and has bathed my room in a warm light , my eye , the good one , is drawn to my Dar whose beauty graces my every morning , filling my heart with a warm light as well , but my head is still in Strokeland, has been since yesterday , it has become a place where I can once again dream of life without wheelchairs and canes but it is always an ugly place , hot and dusty , filled with predators and tricks a giant soul sponge. 

This morning as my brain changes chanels to the awake network I find myself on a porch , it's morning and the too big sun is already too hot , the things out there that seem to constantly skitter away from a direct gaze are already seeking a shady place to do their skittering . something , a bird most likely , shreiks in the distance, I hate the damned birds most of all . time to retire indoors and look over this little cabin , I couldn't inspect it properly last night.  

 I just noted the lack of skittering noises and the absence of the odor of death or the sickness , sounds like a hell of a real estate listing already doesnt it ?, ooh and quaint to, simple and dusty , a small music box on a dresser, plain but pretty . I scoop it up , a good item to trade down the road , no food or booze or meds. no clothing. picked clean , there are sections of my brain , the one that was , that are just like this place , a picked over monument to nothing , something that was and is no more , all signs of its existance wiped away , left to the dust and lonliness. I wish I had coffee , a porch like that requires a hot mug in hand there's a worn out looking knife jammed under the window sill, for trade I think , dropping it into my pack along with the collection of other junk found along the trail , I search for and find my poor tired , floppy hat , like my brain , another soft and worn out thing I usually keep in the head area , and I head back out to the trail, reluctantly , this is a hard , vicious , arduous land. I'm already sweat drenched and my eyes are automatically darting like a hunted "skittering"thing, I shoulder my pack and move on out...left I wonderwho or what lies west of here, gonna find out, so dear, fellow skittering survivor, happy trailsand we'll meet yonderI reckon:)...Phil