I.
When I was taking
Jeet Kune Do
Sifu would make us do things like
Get into horse stance
With heavy dumbbells
In each hand
He would casually walk over
To the stereo and put on
A Steely Dan song,
One of the long ones,
Like “Bodhisattva”
We had to do curls in this position
Until the song was finished
Four minutes and fifty seconds
Of pure agony
When I took Muay Thai kickboxing
(I was training under my brother),
We had to do fireman carries
Of other students over our shoulders
Testing for my arm band
(Kind of like a belt in Karate)
I did classes four times that week,
In Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu,
Plus two private lessons with Kru
Then, on the night of the test,
We did close to a hundred pushups,
As well as burpees, wall-sits, and
Other sadomasochistic insanity
And after all that,
Only then
Did we take our tests
Sparring against
Other students, and
Each of the instructors
We walked through fire
You sharpen steel
Against stone
Some understand
The rigors of training,
The years of martial arts or
The endless struggle
Of bootcamp
Pushing
Exerting
Moving further
Than you believed
You were capable of going
And then, there are those who
Pitch a fit if you ask them
To take out the trash
Or wake up a half-hour
Earlier than usual
II.
Unless you have worked all day
In a field, or grown a vegetable garden,
Then you do not understand
Where food comes from
Unless you have tied your own
Fishing line, baited the hook yourself
With a live, wriggling minnow,
Worm, or cricket,
Caught the fish,
Scaled it, chopped the head off,
Gutted it, and cooked it yourself,
You cannot say that you
Know how to provide food
Unless you have crawled
Out of bed at 3 or 4 am,
Put on long johns,
Several pairs of socks, and other
Heavy winter gear,
Trudged out into the
Dense bramble and thorns
Of the woods,
Climbed up into a tree stand,
Sat there motionless and
Absolutely quiet
For the entire day,
Stared blearily through the twilight fog
At the deer who came out to forage,
Aimed, fired, climbed down,
Dragged that dead deer through the dense
Thorns, branches, and brambles,
Loaded it up into the truck,
Taken it home,
Hooked up the carcass to a hoist winch,
Raised it high up in the air, cutting it open
Spilling the entrails all over the ground,
Skinning it, harvesting the meat, then you
Stored the meat and
Disposed of the guts, and then you
Cooked that meat yourself…
You must not allow yourself
To believe that you are a hunter
Unless you have been in
At least one fight
In which you could have
Literally died,
Not just metaphorically,
You are not a warrior
IV.
Unless your stack of handwritten journals
Reaches up to your ankle
Or higher,
You are not self-aware
Unless the stack of
Books that you’ve read
(Not merely purchased, but read)
About personal growth and
Communication skills and
Emotional regulation
Reaches all the way up
To your knees
Or higher
Then don’t you dare ever say
That you’re “doing the work”
Unless you can move
Through an entire day
Without speaking a single word
To anyone, for any reason,
And do so without complaint
Don’t say that you possess
Discipline or self-control
V.
Some people understand
What it truly means
To push the envelope
To exert themselves beyond exhaustion
To grow farther and faster
Than they ever believed
They were capable of growing
And then, there are those who
Scream or pout
If you challenge them
To stop telling
Childish lies
Or you ask them
For a sincere
Apology
People today
Are soft,
Spongy, and
Weak
On every level
Physically,
Mentally,
Spiritually,
Emotionally
Modern technology
And a society of laws
Protects them
From every type of
Minor discomfort
But the
True world, ⠀
The one that is
Underneath
The polite veneer…
The harsh, brutal,
Violent, real world
Is not for
The weak
And when the shit
Inevitably
Hits the fan,
They won’t
Last very
Long
©2026 Kevin Trent Boswell
The poem above is a standalone piece, and it is not part of the book pictured below.
But my book, Basic Survival Prepping is about the kinds of survival skills discussed in the poem.
Over 500 pages of how-to, DIY approaches to preparing yourself for emergencies and disasters of all types.
