Diary entry from the book {Promehteus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

             Monday July 24       There is an ocean out there. The days are good to me. The sun, trees, and water enhance my being. Even with hard core industry in some places, nature still rules. I have been out a long time on this journey, I am growing tired.
             While loading the boat in the morning a barge came by. I had seen the tow many times before, I think. One of the bargeman steps out the door and yells, "have a safe trip downward!"
              The river was bottle necked on the east side. A mile long sand bar chokes off the river. Barges were staked up in the constrictive area. The current was strong, barges coming downstream were passing through. I paddled near the bar through three inches of water.
              I follow the western shore, a barge is coming up my side, with barges coming down. I hang tight to the bank and take some hard wakes from a barge that passes to close for comfort.
            I go by a log cutting operation, mostly willows. Flocks of white birds, I was told they were cranes. Several colonies of periscoping turtles plopping into the river like dominos.
           Passed the White River, I am camping on a sand bar near Rosedale, Mississippi.

Diary entry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

The awesome power of fate

Placed in the terrarium by the gargantuan

The jungle is infested by the blood thirsty and poisonous

Down in that deep dark blood filled hole

The saber tooth chases deer through the forest

Get down to the violence of survival

Waiting for the right time to escape the glass bubble

It's worth hanging in there

Throwing knives ninja style

My best friend fires a rocket launcher at me

What does life mean in the end but a pocket full of violence

A silly crow landing on my hat, and cawing

Getting screwed by the boss, and fighting back, screw it all

A lonely night spent in heaven

Your back is to the wall, will you ever make it

Adapt or die, fly or cry

A tv junkie sitting in a steel wrapper

Poke a flower in the barrel

Rapid action gunfire.

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy
Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

The edge of death

I'm walking in a house of flames

There is a variety of choices to make and none of them make any damn sense

A naked lady with eight arms hands me an apple and a knife

I lose sight and fall into the water

A liquid mass of atoms

The eagle beckons me to grow talons

The beast grows tall, I become steel.

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

The cups are half full these days

It's a brighter better world out there

It's all a lie, an advertising con game

I understand, but I do not understand

I love, but I cannot love

When the last flower falls, who are we

The big meadow without the cross

The one mountain teaming with waterfalls and tall conifers surrounded by a moat of marshland and lakes

Are we the kin of Crazy Horse?

Is the pain in love everlasting, what does love mean?

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

I stand in the sky touching the cold heart

Watching the snow lizard lick it's wounds

In the darkness a mulberry tree is on fire, melting the snow in a round blue pattern

A naked young woman stands against the flames

A mottled young pup sits obediently and waits for her

The blinking star watches me, I cry out to it for help

A chair gallops up to me and consoles me and tells me to stab myself and fall off the bridge

I wake up to find that I have always been dead

A shrieking silence that blinds

A  blood rojo icicle hangs from my heart

On top of my television set three blind mice conduct a play of Three Musketeers

Three children play on an ocean of grass

The children run up a clock and are catapulted into the sun where little generals play combat with the young pawns

The generals unzip there soldiers chests and remove the bullets and send them back out to play amid the schrapnel

When the generals are done with their little soldiers they send them back home cradling a frozen turkey and a cheap watch made by the people that they fought against.

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

The "Loess Hills" Poetry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

"16 days Backpacking in the Loess Hills"

The coyotes called in the night

Butterflies fight to lick the sun tan lotion off my arms

The ants will carry you away

Don't feel sorry for the man who's made of steel and sweat

Stripped naked of all her wares

I need you when I'm dreaming

I wake into a fools game

She drenches me with coffee and gin

The lady bug rides on my boot

They have planted something new

I have always cared for you

The removal of clothing in the night

A white horse comes into camp

I ride as a ghost in the gale

The sheperds never sleep, they seem to wait for me

The trees live on a seascape of rolling waves of loess soil

Never mind the end, where is the beginning

They fix cars, they disc fields

Where do I fit in.

Poetry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

The "Ran Series" from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

"You're life is my life" said Ran to the still warm body of the deer. He dragged the body down the embankment to the low land woods. He carved the deer as best he could by a fire in the night.

In the morning it was five degrees out and whitely dead. Ran ate by the fire with frosted fingers and a red dot nose. He curled up like a squirrel in his bag fat and happy and let the day move on in dreams.

The "Ran Series" from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Burn me country child

Torch my fucking ass, I loved you

She knew I would show up at her door someday

Standing at the doorway dripping blood and tears

Bank robbery, taking down the mansion

Of a big spender who flushed a thousand jobs away

She had to let me go and flush me down the toilet

A bird hits the window looking to fight it's reflection

Skilled people walking the street looking for a piece of bread to eat

Another jagged edge

Is this the happiest time of life

Living in a cocoon

Smooth Johnny and his dead parrot Pete

Getting high on a train line party

Look at all these people with Aids, please help them

Take control over your life

We live our lives on the upper branches, on the lightest leaf

The global system that kills, the third world always loses

Tanks, guns, and oil wells, and little generals with their hands out

There are changes coming, but it takes so long to move this dinosaur race

Never know, never give up, think about what you must do

Don't get tired and lazy, no one will give you food

All some people want are servants, to be served by others

The meaningless life, the party girl.

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Diary entry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

              Sunday July 23        I've paddled hard today, I've gone past Helena, Arkansas. Just south of Helena I had to skip around a towboat working on a finger dike.
              The fishermen gave me a loaf of bread and slices of bologna. They were wonderful guys, but they left a disaster area of garbage on the beach. Eighty cans of beer and plastic wrappers strewn across the sand bar. If I picked up every piece of garbage off the beach I don't think I could fit in my boat.
           " It's all down hill from here", they said.
           There many trees in the river. Several houses on the riverbank, which is unusual. Saw the St Francis River flowing in.
            A storm is brewing and it rains hard tonight. I am camping on a strange grassy area, it is a gift from the sand.

Diary entry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

There is a place that has hills that are mountains

Trees cry out from all sides

It is a relic land carved by water and made by an ocean

The stone stands still to be changed into a spire

Touch it, and feel its power and you shall know its past and future

A thousand springs flow down hills in true flight

The rivers, the water, the color of my dreams

It is a place of green peace

Lonely minds can crave its days

The suns rays flow down to the forest floor to light the buttercups and violets just right

You can be brought to face the true sun

A coyote howls in the night, a beaver splashes by your bed

It is beauty, it is thus, it is the maker of you.

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Diary entry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

              Saturday July 22       Just south of Memphis. A lot of barge traffic today, and at the end of the day I met several fishing boats. A big rain system is moving in, I'm paddling through a large curving dike system. I spot a viable campsite on the west side, a sandbar that is probably the product of dredging by the Corps. Just as I reach the campsite I see a tent already there, and a bass boat swerves in to check me out. It is spitting rain and I ask them if they would mind me camping nearby. They said it was okay, and I unloaded my boat, and set up my tent as the rain increased.
            As it rained off and on I drank a few beers and talked to the fishermen. They told me four or five days I'd be in New Orleans. I doubted there figure. They had never heard of Lake Itasca or anything north of Cairo, Illinois.
             It rains hard all night long with country music blaring from the bass boat.

Diary entry from the book {Prometheus Lives} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas

                        Let a poor man fall down
                             Let a rich man pay
                        Eat your fat sisters cake
                            Please don't be late
                             Touch down Jesus
                             Touch down Jesus.

Poetry from the book {Bunny Hop} by Artist Troy Richard Thomas