Trail Prozac: A Biographical Poem by Chris Knodel

Sometimes people ask me, “Why do you run?”

“Why freeze in the snow or bake in the sun,”

“Through woods, through the sand, over mountains and dale?”

And I tell them quite honestly, “I run ‘cause I ail.”

I am dark, uncontrolled, aggressive, unbalanced,

Diagnosed hyper vigilant, and teeming with malice.

I’ve always been angry, I’ve always been mad,

And the voices inside were convincingly bad.

I tried to calm down, love my neighbor and grow,

Tried to find ‘kindness,’ and emotions to show,

But the voices would thunder again and again,

And would burn like a coal in my skull from within.

I tried Thorazine and I dropped Lexi-pro,

In the hopes that the meds would allow me go

Through my life without hatred of my fellow man,

But again, yes again, I kept failing my plan.

As they talked I would bristle, my fists would clench up,

And my rage would boil over like wine from a cup.

But a single instance allowed me to sway,

And push all those demons back down and away.

One foot pushing forward, with the other behind,

Running trails, fast and hard…cleansing body and mind.

The hatred, still present, but subdued and benign

Allows me to function, to love and design,

A world of my making, not shackled by hate,

Redirected, through running, to a much different fate

So I run, and keep running, without dwelling on it,

In my Inov-8 shoes and my INKnBURN kit.