Food for Thought

He sat in the darkness indian-style in front of the open pantry door.  His flashlight lay next to him shining its light under the bottom shelf illuminating cans of vegetables.  He had picked out five of them and was carefully writing words on the bottom side with a black sharpie.

The can in hand was spinach, the worst of the bunch in his estimation.  It was the kind that sloshes out when you pour it into a pan to warm it up on the stove, a gooey dark green clump, almost black, that his mother sometimes made for dinner.  It was so repulsive that he would douse each bite in salt, hold his nose closed with his free hand, then swallow it in one gulp quickly followed by enough water to thoroughly rinse his mouth of the taste.  Those nights it was almost guaranteed he would wet the bed.

He put the finishing touches on the last can and carefully put them in the back of the pantry where they were likely to be chosen last or maybe even forgotten.  The sharpie fit snugly into a loop stitched into the cargo pocket of his pants.  He grabbed the flashlight while standing to his feet and its light washed over some family vacation photos taped to the side of the refrigerator.  He paused to look at them and found himself transported to the beach, feeling sand under his feet and between his toes.  The mom's warm smile drew him in and he could almost feel her arms pulling him into a hug, the smell of coconut and bananas mixing in a salty breeze.

A noise from upstairs jarred him free from the sunny scene and froze him in his spot, straining to listen for movement of any kind in the darkness.  When he was satisfied that he had not been discovered he slipped back into the mudroom and through the open window into the backyard, closing it behind him.

It was his third house of the evening and all the tension of sneaking about had exhausted him.  It was some time after midnight and his mom and dad were still not back from wherever they'd gone to enjoy themselves on a Saturday night.  He was tired, but couldn't sleep, his brain still buzzing from the break-ins.  He decided to go through his Army pack to make sure there were no glaring omissions of what he might need if... the sound of a car brought him quickly to his window.

It was coming down the street slower than one would expect and then pulled too quickly to the curb with one tire actually coming up onto the grass.  He watched his mom stumble out of the driver's side and make her way slowly around to the passenger side.  When she got the door open his dad slumped out onto the grass "like spinach from a can", he thought.  After a failed attempt or two she was able to get him upright and lurching towards the front door in the darkness.  Carl felt like the lone survivor of a parental apocalypse.

***

He sat under the stairwell at his Middle School half hidden in shadows, a sixth grader with precious few friends reading his favorite comic book.  School had let out and the kids had cleared out leaving him alone in the old building.  It was quiet here and an opportunity for him to visit his friends in the world of The Walking Dead.  Where he'd left off, the band of survivors were piled into an old RV and had just pulled up to an abandoned prison complex.  Through the fence topped by barbed wire they could see a large number of zombies wandering the grounds.  They needed to clear them out if they were going to be able to make this their new home.

The idea that they could find refuge inside of a prison fascinated Carl.  A prison is a place to isolate people who are a danger to the world, he reasoned, but in this story it was a place to protect the people from the world outside its walls.  Things had been turned upside down here and he felt a kind of kinship with those caught in such a situation.  The thought occurred to him that his own mind was like a prison where he could isolate himself from the dangers of the world around him.

"HEY!"

He had not noticed the boy getting so close and was caught completely off guard.  The comic book flew up out of his hands in an involuntary motion and landed between them.

"Dude!  I totally scared the shit out of you!"  He recognized the boy as an eighth grader who from the looks of him was there for basketball practice.  The much larger boy scooped up the comic book and flipped it open.  "What kind of weird shit is this?  You must be some kind of geek freak zombie lover."

Carl stood up slowly and reached out to retrieve his comic, but the boy lifted it over his head out of his reach.  "No way, dude.  This is going in the trash."

"Give it back."

"Give it back or what?  What are ya gonna do?  Shoot me in the head?"  He continued to hold the comic aloft and headed towards the bathroom with Carl close behind.  In the bathroom the boy stopped by a toilet.  "Wait, I think this is where it belongs" and dropped it into the toilet bowl.

As echoes of the boy's laughter receded down the hallway, Carl fished his comic book out of the toilet water and dried it as best he could with paper towels, then finished the job with the hand dryer on the wall.  It can be a cruel world, he thought, zombies or no zombies.

***

Tonight was the big night.  Carl had been thinking about it all week long since the idea first popped into his head while riding his bike home from school.  With the recent chaos surrounding the presidential election he was sure the time was quickly approaching when his work would necessarily come to an end as would many other things.  He was sowing seeds of hope that had yet to be planted and he needed to up his game.

The only cars left in the ALDI parking lot were those of the employees who were eager to close up and go home for the evening.  Carl was familiar with this place and its routines from his regular stops on the way home from school.  He was always on the lookout for stray carts that someone had not bothered to return and lock to reclaim their quarter.  It was part of a trickling revenue stream that included finding and returning empty bottles to another grocery store for refunds.  He had never resorted to stealing, though he had been tempted to plenty of times.  His parents did not know of his morbid comic book collection and would not likely approve as there was so little he liked that they found acceptable or even understood.  It was up to him to find ways to acquire and hide them.

When it looked like there was no one in the front of the store he made his way through the sliding doors and quickly began to look for an empty box.  He found one on top of other boxes filled with bags of potato chips and he pulled the middle column out into the aisle.  The overhead music suddenly quieted and he heard a voice coming from the next aisle over.

"Did you hear someone come in?  I thought I heard the doors open."

Another voice farther away, "I don't know.  I've been in the back.  Can you check it out?  I wanna get the heck out of here."

As quietly as possible Carl slipped in behind the boxes and attempted to pull them back in as far as he could while putting the empty box over his head.  He heard footsteps coming around the corner of his aisle and he stopped pulling.

"Hey!  Did you pull these boxes out?  They're halfway out in the aisle."

There had not been enough time to pull the boxes back in flush and he felt himself getting too hot and breathing too fast.  The man approached and began pushing the boxes in on him.  He pulled his knees to his chest as far as he could but it was not enough.  He heard the man mumbling angrily to himself and felt the box thumping against him with each push and kick.

The empty box over his head suddenly disappeared as the man snatched it off of him.  Right as the man was starting to look down at Carl in his hideaway the voice from the back yelled, "What are you doing up there? Leave it and let's go!"

The man dropped the box back onto Carl's head without looking down and headed back into the store.  A few minutes later the lights went out and he was left alone.

He had come prepared with his flashlight, a few extra batteries, and two sharpies this time.  He planned to work through the night and be gone before anyone arrived to open the store in the morning.  He pulled each flat of cans off of a pallet and laid them along the side of the aisle.  One by one he began writing on the bottoms of the cans and replacing them until an entire pallet's worth was done and could be rebuilt before moving on to another.  He was meticulous in his work and would not rush it, though time tapped on his head like a physical sensation.  The longer he was there the greater the risk, but the work had to be done.  This was no time to wimp out.

Several hours later he felt completely spent.  His hands, arms, and back were cramping up from all of the lifting, moving, and writing.  He allowed himself a break as the early morning sun began to wash in over the tops of the aisles.  He knew he still had at least an hour or two before anyone would show up and so allowed himself to lean back onto a box to catch a breather before putting the finishing touches on the last batch of cans still left in the aisle.  He'd done more than he'd thought he could do and relaxed just enough to be pulled quickly down into slumber against his will.

He awoke in a brilliant orange glow that filled every nook and cranny of the store bringing him quickly to his feet.  How long had he slept?  He had forgotten where he was or why he had come here and was disoriented by the light that continued to grow in intensity until suddenly flashing out.  When his eyes had readjusted to a relative darkness they were drawn to the front windows where a monstrous red fireball could be seen swirling upwards on the horizon and a noise like a thousand stampeding buffalo was growing as the earth began to quiver beneath his feet.  Before he could react or make sense of it, the plate glass windows exploded inward and knocked him off of his feet.

He crawled to the store entrance through broken glass with surprisingly little pain, his bloodied palms making tracks on the floor.  In the parking lot black ash was falling softly through a thick dusty haze, the blackened outline of trees like giant spiders frozen in the dead silence.  Carl absent-mindedly wiped his hands on his shirt as he moved towards the bushes to find his bike, still dazed from the blast.  His head cocked to the side at a noise coming from overhead.  A grouping of what appeared to be fireballs were arcing towards him.  They cried out in a flutter of wings and flames, burning crows landing all around him, one on his head setting his hair on fire and singeing his eyes...

The light was so bright it sent a sliver of pain into his skull.

"What are you doing here kid?"

Carl rubbed his eyes vigorously and then lifted his hand to block the piercing beam of the flashlight.  He was still lying back against the box where he'd fallen asleep.  A police officer stood over him with a thumb hooked into his utility belt and the other training a flashlight on the young trespasser.

***

The detective observed him through the two-way mirror sitting at a table looking small and lost to the world.  The boy's eyes were focused somewhere far away and he correctly surmised that this one was prone to daydreaming.  He'd just talked with the boy's parents and it made the scene that much more poignant for him.  They were self-consumed assholes and they had almost no clue as to the boy's routines, interests, or whereabouts.  It seemed to him that they were simply pissed that the boy had had the audacity to inconvenience them in this way.  He would deal with them again later, but for now it was time to speak with the boy.  He shifted the box in his lap to his hip as he stood to enter the room from a side door.

As the door swung open Carl's eyes returned from their far journey and focused on the man entering the room.   He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and tie with a bit of a paunch hanging over his belt.  A badge hung from his jacket pocket, but what most worried him was the cardboard box he was carrying.  The man placed the box on the table with a clank and sat down facing Carl across the table.

"Do you know what I have here, young man?"

"No, sir."

"You have been a very busy boy and we've been able to connect you to several home break-ins."

Carl lowered his eyes to the table.  The detective reached into the box and pulled out five cans of foodstuffs, one at a time, and lined them up on the table forming a small wall between him and the boy.

"Do you recognize these?"

Carl shook his head "no" and continued to stare at the table.  The detective tipped one of the cans towards himself and laid it down so that the bottom faced the boy.

Carl looked up and saw writing on the round metal surface.  The detective laid them all down to reveal the messages written there.  Reading some of them, he intoned, "Don't give up hope.  This too shall pass.  Live one day at a time."

"Do you recognize the writing on these cans, Carl?"  Carl Remained silent.

"Can you at least tell me why you are doing this?"  His question was met with silence, the boy's eyes looking somewhere over the detective's left shoulder.  In that look he understood the boy was someplace that he could not follow.

***

It had been several days since he'd last ate and the man was beginning to wonder if his luck had finally run out.  He was holed up in a house that only had half a roof, but the fireplace was functional and he needed heat to compensate for all of the weight he'd dropped with only sporadic access to food and so much damn walking.  He tossed a coffee table leg into the fire and then pulled out his service revolver, absent-mindedly spinning the cylinder with the hammer pulled back.  He still had his badge as well, but no one cared about that anymore.  He kept it mostly as a reminder that he'd once been one of the good guys.  His last bullet had been spent several months ago to thwart an attack by some scavengers on the road and now the gun was just a prop of sorts in this sordid post-apocalyptic play.

The warmth of the fire tempted him with sleep, but his empty stomach would not allow it.  He snatched up a stick from the pile of kindling and wrapped a strip of curtain cloth around the end, tied it off, then dipped it in a tin of motor oil he'd drained from a car in the yard.  It burst into flame over the fire.  As he carried it down a hallway the light from the sputtering flame played over his heavily bearded face and the wall paper patterns like cave paintings from some ancient time.  The kitchen appeared relatively untouched except for a coating of dust and ash.  He was sure it had been emptied long before he'd arrived, but there was still an ember of hope buried deep inside him smoldering.

He methodically opened all of the cabinets and probed with his free hand to check every nook and cranny without success.  That ember had dimmed as of late and he did not know how much longer he could keep it going.  He felt he'd become a ghost of a man, but now he wondered if that might not become literally true, by his own hand or not.  He checked the pantry closet next and found it empty.  He laid on the floor and let the light play in under the bottom shelf, a space that appeared to be empty as well.  His probing hand hit what he thought was the back wall, but it was a bit too shallow for that.  It moved at his touch and then fell over.  He realized it was a cut piece of cardboard standing on end.  Behind it his hand closed on a hard cylindrical object which he pulled out into the light.  It was a can, but more importantly, it was an unopened can.

Back in the living room he scraped the last of the beans from the warmed pan to eat, and then reclined back in the seat of a legless chair that still had enough stuffing to provide some comfort.  Now that he had a little energy he wondered if this was the time to call it quits.  The world had gone to shit and he was tired of trudging through it.  He placed his hand on his chest and felt the pouch hanging there under his layers of ratty clothes.  He pulled it out and emptied its contents into his palm, a rolled wad of oil cloth.  Inside its layers he extracted the last "last" bullet and chambered it.

He tried not to think too much about it; pull back the hammer, place it against your head, pull the trigger.  His eyes focused beyond the fire until the flames were just a shimmering curtain of light.  As he felt the pressure of the trigger against his finger begin to grow his eyes dropped to the floor and lit on the empty bean can.  Something about it in the fire light caught his attention and he immediately lowered the revolver to his lap and leaned forward to pick it up.

On the bottom in precise handwritten letters was a message, "Don't give up hope."  He stared at it giving a few hard blinks before the room suddenly blurred out as his eyes welled up with tears.  "Good God Almighty... that kid," he choked out to the empty room.  The memory was as clear as spring water.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried or that his heart hadn't been anything other than a dry husk of an organ.

He flopped back onto the chair clinging to the metal talisman, laid the revolver on his chest, and closed his eyes letting the tears stream down into his beard.  For a while longer he muttered to himself sleepily and even chuckled a time or two, "live one day at a time... this too shall pass," as the fire crackled in response.  Sleep crept in and claimed the raggedy man.


***

To Be

"Show, don't tell"
is advise given to writers
but is something we all
could bear to hear.
So much telling
which is so much
meaningless yibberish,
vibrations we send
out into empty air
adding less than nothing.
The next best thing,
if that is the way to say it,
is to do, do, do.
Better still
is to be, be, be.
From this all else flows.
But here I am
just writing words.
Forgive me.


***

The Summer of Endless Summer Camps

I spent the summer of 1989 traveling from church camp to church camp, a week at a time, representing my conservative Christian college as a student and recruiting tool.  There were two teams splitting up the map with two males and two females per van.  What I can recall over the course of those hectic months is a patchwork of memories spread out over several hundreds of miles of the American Midwest.

-the incredible taste of milk in Wisconsin

We'd pulled in late and found some people in the dining hall which was the only building with lights on.  Campers had yet to arrive at this dark and secluded spot somewhere in the wilds of Wisconsin.  As was often the case in this summer of homeless wandering I was hungry from not having consistent access to good food.  A large cafeteria-style milk dispensing cooler caught my eye and I asked if I could have a glass or maybe someone offered it, I can't remember.

I was not a big fan of milk growing up and would never think to drink it by itself, but I was hungry and I drank it greedily.  I quickly realized this rich creamy liquid was unlike any milk I'd ever drank before.  I don't know if it was "raw" or just less processed, but throughout that week I drank as much of it as I could feasibly get access to without raising eyebrows on the camp staff.  It was the perfect drink and I nearly became a closet milkoholic.

-a boat on a lake in the middle of the night in Minnesota

Minnesota is full of lakes.  I probably knew that from studying the states and their capitals in school, but that is not the same as actually seeing them, one after the other, while driving through the towns and landscapes of this northern place.  The camp was, of course, on a large lake surrounded by forests.  There was a dock with a row boat and a beach for swimming.  At this particular camp we were each assigned our own group of campers.  I was staying with five very rambunctious sixth graders in a small cabin.

I befriended two other counselors, one of whom I found very attractive.  Some time mid-week we hatched a plan to commandeer the boat in the middle of the night and row it out onto the lake.  My alarm went off around 2am.  I dressed quietly and snuck out into the crisp chilly air.  I waited for them for at least thirty minutes and was ready to give up and go back to my cabin when they finally arrived disheveled and bleary-eyed.  Between us and the lake was a large open area with some picnic tables.  One of the girls was convinced that a large dark object on one of them was a camp staff member which had her spooked and afraid we would get into trouble.  I could not convince her otherwise and they decided to return to their cabins and go back to sleep.

By that time I'd been up long enough that I was not ready to go back to bed and, besides, the lake beckoned.  I walked down to the dock and shoved off in the boat.  I rowed out to the middle of the lake and then just sat there thinking about my place in the world.  The moon and stars shown brilliantly overhead and illuminated my precarious form bobbing on the water, a boy-man feeling lost and lonely.  It was like taking a time out from life to float in the mystery of a sparkling ether.

-sneaking off to see Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan in Michigan

One of the camps in Michigan, if I remember correctly, came up early in the summer when we were still in the process of getting used to this gypsy life of travel and trying to figure out our roles within the group and at the camps.  There was some rare down time before that particular camp and I'd noticed a marquee when we'd rolled into town advertising a Star Trek movie, "The Wrath of Khan."

I was more of a Battlestar Galactica kind of guy, but I was craving some escapism.  In retrospect, it must have been a re-release because the internet informs me the original came out in 1982.*  I didn't exactly sneak off, but there was some heated discussion as to whether we could use our stipend to see a movie and/or use the van to get us there.  It ended up that I was the only one to go because of the pall of potential impropriety that loomed over this decision.

Ricardo Montalban was masterfully intense.  My previous experience of this particular actor was his TV role as impeccably dressed Mr. Roarke rolling his R's on Fantasy Island.  It was surreal to see him with long wavy hair, bare chested, and wearing raggedy barbarian clothes.  I also seem to recall cicada-like insects crawling into people's ears for the purpose of mind control.  It was probably not the thing to see with many more camps to go, sleeping in bug-ridden cabins, tents, and dormitories.

-sitting in an ice cold spring coming out of a hillside in Iowa

Iowa was interesting.  We drove through countless acres of corn before finding the camp hugging a river amongst some trees and rolling hills .  There was an outdoor basketball court sitting in a shadeless spot and the temperature was in the 90's that week.

The featured speaker was Tim Elmore, an evangelist by trade who we overlapped with a few times that summer.  He was the kind of guy who could bring out the best in someone with seemingly little effort.  I'd challenged him to a game of one on one at another camp that had not found fruition until this one.  We were a pair of evenly matched skinny white guys out there sweating profusely and exchanging tepid trash talk (it was a Christian camp after all).

I don't remember who won, but I do remember feeling so over heated that I went to find a spring that I was told was on the camp grounds.  It was coming from a crack in the side of a hill amongst the trees and pooled in a little manmade basin before trickling on down the hill.  It was ice cold and reminded me of that milk, ie, representative of the best that water had to offer in terms of taste and refreshment.  My core was so hot I ended up taking a seat in the basin of water and pouring it over my head.  Some campers came up the hill with containers to get some water, saw me sitting in it, and decided to turn around and come back later.

-driving all night singing and playing the piano on the dashboard to the music of Keith Green while hopped up on sugar

The longest leg of all our driving that summer was a several hundred mile stretch from south to north paralleling the Mississippi river flowing in the opposite direction somewhere over the horizon to the west.  We needed to be somewhere (Minnesota?  Wisconsin?) the next day and so an all night drive was planned.  I volunteered for the late stretch and ended up letting everyone sleep while I drove all night.  I was popping candies, sipping soda, and playing music by Keith Green on a small boom box.  The sugar had me feeling downright manic as I aggressively pounded the dashboard with my fingers pretending it was a piano and singing along with the music.

I had been a rabid Keith Green fan since my pastor's wife first introduced me to his music in early High School.  While in college a multi-tape greatest hits collection was released and I'd scraped all my pennies together and broke the bank to buy all four of them.  He had died in 1982 (when "The Wrath of Khan" debuted in theaters, if you remember) in a small plane crash that also claimed the lives of two of his children.  His music was infectious, but could be profound as well.  It sustained me for years, but it most assuredly did so on that marathon drive through the darkest night until a pale pink sky began to grow outside my passenger side window with the coming of morning.

-filling an unmentionable with Cherry 7-up outside a gas station in Indiana

I don't know if I saved the best for last, but it was definitely the funniest if not most preposterous thing to happen that long exhausting summer.  I imagine we were getting pretty punchy by the time this occurred.  This included becoming more comfortable with each other's quirks and character flaws, the four of us having spent so much time on the road together confined in a van.

We were driving just south of Indianapolis at night when we had to stop for gas.  I went in for a bathroom break and was a bit taken aback to find a coin operated machine for dispensing various x-rated items.  One choice for three quarters was a "French Tickler."  I had absolutely no idea what that was or why it might cause someone from France to laugh.  I identified a straight forward condom and got the idea to buy it and blow it up as a gag.

Back at the van I produced the balloon-like object and commenced to blow it up.  Their eyes grew large in disbelief, but quickly transitioned to yelling and laughing.  Someone got the idea that we should fill it up with Cherry 7-up from a 2 liter bottle we had in the front seat.  As the pinkish liquid filled and expanded the condom in a grossly distorted and exaggerated manner the peals of laughter began to grow in volume and intensity until I thought one of the girls might be hyperventilating.  When we could take no more, the whole asinine project was hoisted out the window and it exploded on Highway 37.

*One of my fellow travelers informed me on FB that the movie was actually Batman which makes much more sense.  Memory has its own strange and mysterious ways.

A Haunted New Year

My in-laws live in a two hundred year old brick farm house on thirteen acres in rural Ohio.  It is a fascinating structure that includes a summer kitchen that sits catty-cornered from the back door as well as a large deteriorating barn connected to it by a brick path.  The side of the house opposite the barn nestles into a forested area that my son and I have thoroughly explored over his twelve years of life.

I won't lie.  It can be creepy at times with its low door frames that I have to duck my head to walk under or the old slatted wood floors that creak as well as brick walls with odd holes and crevices.  I've oftentimes wondered about its history or gotten shivers when ascending the steep attic stairs or descending the equally steep basement ones.  So that is the set up for my experience yesterday during a New Year's Day visit.

The extended family was all down in the living room sharing memories and laughing at stories I'd heard multiple times before when I pealed off to go to the bathroom.  I chose to use the one upstairs for privacy and made my way up those steep creaky steps.  The bathroom was down a hallway to the right, but straight ahead farther down the hall was Jennifer's old room.  The door to that room was slightly ajar and when I turned to head towards the bathroom my brain registered that a large life-like doll was sitting there in a small rocking chair with a baby in its arms, a shawl drooped around her shoulders.

As soon as I stepped off towards the bathroom a step or two the peculiarity of such a possibility struck me and the glimpsed image in my mind suddenly became an unnerving one.  I stopped in my tracks and felt a chill run down my spine.  I walked back to where the hallway turned and approached Jennifer's old room.  When I reached the door the "doll" raised her head to look at me and I realized it was Anya who had stolen away from the group and come up here to sit in a kid-sized rocking chair to rock her swaddled baby reindeer (Sven from "Frozen") that she'd just gotten for Christmas.  The shawl had come from an old trunk in the room.

I later laughed about it with Anya and Elias because it mimicked the scenario from a Goose Bumps episode about "Lilly D", a life-sized doll that comes to life and terrorizes a family.  I had Anya pose for the photograph to picture what I'd glimpsed while rounding that corner to visit the bathroom on New Year's Day.

***

A Silent Night on the Psych Ward

It was a silent night on the psychiatric ward

where Sarah sat staring at the flickering TV

while snow fell outside the locked windows.

It was a holy night with Frank fluttering 

his magnificent wings through sleepless

nights and places unreachable by reason.

All is calm, especially in Mary's room 

where she lies motionless staring at the

ceiling, unable to move or speak her mind.

All is bright for Brenda who sees lights and

stars filling the creases and crevices of

sterile rooms in infinite dimensions.

'Round yon virgin stands Crystal who has 

been raped so many times she has lost

count, revisiting them nightly in her dreams.

Mother and child, a relationship lost to Rick 

whose Mom had abandoned him as a kid,

growing up in a treacherous foster care system.

 

Holy infant visit this place of damaged

and lost souls who have seen and experienced

what few can even begin to imagine or understand.

So tender and mild, Tina the underpaid psych tech

who is a ray of hope to these patients with her

concern, graciousness, and lack of judgement.

Sleep in heavenly peace you who have not been 

forced to see those in such a state or had to 

imagine what these tortured lives might be like.

Sleep in heavenly peace remembering all who

suffer this Christmas without consolation of 

family or friends, isolated from the wider world.

***

Ghost of a Prayer

Feeling empty, 

waiting to be filled 

with something more 

than the petty pittances 

of misguided desires,

I quietly offer up a 

ghost of a prayer

***

Grandma Galatians

It seems that so few people go to church anymore
or treat it like just one of many possibilities that
can fill a week of activities, like getting ice cream
or going to a sporting event.  When conflicts arise
it is the first to go, an easy cut from the schedule
that seemingly has no repercussions.  But for me,
it's like failing to visit an adoring grandmother who
lives alone, in failing health, and is eager to see me in
order to heap love on my shoulders while taking off
the heavy stuff that is otherwise crushing my soul.
But maybe in my short-sightedness I have failed
to see or understand that love.  As I prioritize other
things she sits in her rocking chair looking out the
window hoping to see my family pull up the driveway.
It is not about boredom.  It is not about inconvenience.
It is about love because God *is* love and longs to
meet with us in his house and sup with us so that
we grow together sharing one another's burdens.


***

Elementary School Field Trip

I Dream of Trump

A long and meandering dream last night... I was hanging out with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in NYC.  Donald was driving the car, I was in the middle, and Hillary was on the other side of me by the passenger door.  We reminisced, pontificated, and emoted on a variety of subjects like old friends.

At some point I notice we are coming up on a stop sign and Donald is not even attempting to slow down.  I tell him, "Donald, that's a stop sign."  He shakes his head like "I know, I know," then commences to blow right through it as another car enters the intersection.  Donald simply goes around it in the opposite lane and when oncoming traffic presents itself he keeps going left, up over the curb, over the sidewalk, and onto the grass of a city park.  He continues across the park and then remerges with traffic on the other side of the park going the right direction.

We drive through old town Manhattan and then park and go into the lobby of a building, waiting to meet someone.  Donald's hair is a mess and I try to convince him to put on my baseball cap.  "It's fine, it's fine," he waves me off.  During all of this, Hillary is like the long suffering mother-figure keeping her comments to a minimum.

I was describing this dream to another staff member today at work and it struck me that 1) he ignores the stop sign and gets in trouble, 2) he is still in trouble with the oncoming traffic, but 3) he avoids the consequences of both actions by short-cutting through the park.  That is DJT in a nutshell.

'til away I fly

humor is a drug
I shoot into
a willing vein,
trying to fill
the empty spaces,
crowding out the pain

making a sound
that could be
a laugh or a cry,
before I die,
wanting to love
and be loved in reply

without a need
to ask why
or to justify,
something that is
and will always be
'til away I fly


***

The Airfield Mosque

It was a beautiful Sunday morning when Captain Love opened his eyes to see the sun streaming in through his window.  Still thick from dreams he thought he was back home and rolled over to kiss his wife, but found himself alone in the small bed.  The light coming through the single window illuminated his flak jacket and shoulder holster with 9mm pistol hanging from a hook on the wall.  He pushed in firmly at his temples and then rubbed his shaved head vigorously to exorcise the disappointment and depression threatening to overwhelm him at finding himself once again in Iraq.

Eventually he rolled over and sat up clopping his boots to the ground and checked the cargo pocket of his combat fatigues for a pack of gum.  Years ago as an enlisted infantryman it would have been a pack of smokes to help clear the cobwebs from his brain.  Those were the years before he'd had a wife and small son to look after, when his health was something he'd taken for granted.  His back was sore from spending half the night under his bed as a spate of mortar fire had hit somewhere inside the base walls.  He rubbed at his lower back and was reminded of the title of a book he'd read in college "Things Fall Apart."

Several plastic bottles of what appeared to be Mountain Dew were sitting on the floor beside his bed.  Stumbling through pitch darkness to find the port-a-pot at night was an unpleasant and somewhat dangerous exercise in a war zone, so empty water bottles were saved throughout the day and served as temporary holding containers for a soldier's urine.  He had accumulated a good number of them over the course of the week and they were beginning to take up an inordinate amount of floor space in his small hooch.  There were certain advantages to being a male in an austere environment and this was certainly one of them.

It was his day off, the first in over a month.  His plan was to avoid the Combat Stress Clinic where he worked and stay away from his sleeping quarters as well to assure he stayed off and could enjoy his time in whatever way possible in this god-forsaken place.  The only way for them to find him would be to send the runner on duty to pick him up at his hooch.  A light rain suddenly began to fall and he could hear the drops tapping on the plastic coverings of the sandbags on his roof.  He stepped back inside and grabbed his wet weather gear as well as his small digital camera, tucking it into a waterproof inner pocket.

His practice of taking pictures during the day and downloading them to his laptop in the evening had become his go-to method for stress relief during this deployment.   He was always amazed at what beauty could be found in even so desolate a place if the eye and heart remained connected and attentive.  He was partial to shadows, his own included, as outlines on a variety of backdrops.  This was most effective during the golden hour of early evening and worked as a metaphor in his mind for his feelings of loneliness and insubstantiality brought on from being separated from his wife and son on the wrong side of an ocean.

Large sections of the base were a maze of concrete walls meant to isolate damage from incoming mortar fire, a regular source of things raining from the sky.  In comparison, Captain Love did not mind the watery kind.  It was a different kind of chill.  The base was on the outskirts of Mosul and used to be the city's airport before the US Army rolled in and took control of it.  Any possibilities of air travel rested solely with the foreign occupiers inside their walled compound.  Within those walls he'd seen a stone minaret beyond the Combat Support Hospital that had piqued his curiosity and promised to be a prime spot for taking pictures.

This was his opportunity to explore, but not before getting a cup of coffee to keep the chilly air at bay.  The Green Bean sat next to the Hospital just off of the flight line.  It was a modular room fronted by a covered patio with a random assortment of tables and chairs.  He recognized the music as "French Cafe", one of many Putumayo World Music CD's played in rotation and a favorite of his.  It was mid-morning and the line was uncharacteristically short.  The men working there were good-natured with strong accents and easy smiles, just a few of many foreign contractors working on the base from places like Pakistan and Somalia.

He did not linger as he was wont to do.  The promise of the mosque beckoned him and he needed to keep moving to keep warm.  He walked in the general direction of the mosque hitting a dead end or two before finding the main road that got him to his destination.  The mosque was situated at a convergence of three roads and was surrounded by a stone wall about chest high.  The lone minaret was the commanding feature and looked to be leaning at a slight angle.  The road he was walking on split in two at the backside of the small mosque compound and he had to circle around, following the wall, to find access through the front gate.

Having spent time in Tikrit and now Mosul, Captain Love was often saddened by the lack of greenery.  In Tikrit there was a stand of symmetrically planted trees near his clinic that were either half dead or shattered from mortar fire.  There was still evidence of irrigation ditches between the rows and some rusted pipes sticking up above the dirt that had eroded away.  One evening, while walking on the road to the chow hall, the sun had just disappeared leaving a blaze of colors on the horizon.  He noticed one of the intact trees was forming a beautiful silhouette, so he ran back to the clinic to retrieve his camera to capture it.

The grounds of the mosque within the walls was overgrown.  Bushes were bulging upwards and outwards, losing their symmetry and crowding the main walkway.  Lamp posts sat askew with shattered glass panes and broken light bulbs.  Birds were everywhere flitting from roof to tree to wall, fully aware of the importance of this patch of green to their ecosystem.  There were no signs forbidding entrance to the grounds and so he entered the forgotten place and forgot himself, becoming the eye of a camera taking pictures and fighting the temptation to enter the minaret which he knew could be dangerous and might get him reprimanded.

The mosque itself was small and in the shape of an octagon, constructed of white stone blocks with painted line patterns embellishing it.  The top of the dome was bare of the faded and peeling green paint that still clung to its rounded base.  He approached the front door and found a padlock dangling from a broken clasp that had been used to secure the door.  He was hidden from view on the mosque porch due to the overgrown bushes which emboldened him to grasp the door handle and give it a tug.  It opened with a creak and a sigh.  He thought he heard a scurrying sound from within which froze him to the spot, unsure of what to do.

It's not like he had a choice, yet he did have a choice even if it did not feel that way.  He felt drawn into the roundish room though he was not Muslim and he knew he did not belong in this place or in this country.  He could see light slanting downwards from the high windows illuminating swaths of the gloomy interior.  Thoughts of taking off his boots crossed his mind, but were dismissed as impractical if not foolish in this unknown place.  A flash of shadows and dark shapes startled him and had him reflexively reaching for his sidearm.  The movements were frantic, but then settled into shadows of birds landing on the outside window sills.

This was more than enough excitement for one day for Captain Love.  He scanned the room once more before leaving, but caught sight of a slight movement across the room.  This time he did pull out his sidearm and pointed it towards the interior of the building.  On the opposite side of the room was a niche that he had not seen before his eyes had adjusted to the mix of light and dark.  It was within that recessed space that he'd seen something move.  He did not know of any animals on the base beyond a dog that one of the units kept as a mascot.  He was most concerned for the possibility of an enemy combatant holing up in the place to evade detection.

It was a quandary.  If he left to get help the presumed person could escape and make mischief of some sort or other.  If he checked it out himself there would be no backup if something went wrong.  He decided to proceed with caution and called out to the dark shape.  There was no answer and so he advanced with his sidearm thrust in front of him, flipping off the safety.  Halfway across the room he could see it was, in fact, a huddled human form in the niche but smaller than he expected.  He remembered he had a small tactical flashlight clipped to his flak jacket and trained it on the spot.  Two impossibly large eyes stared intensely back at him.

It was a boy of no more than six years of age, the same age as his son.  His hair stuck out from his head and had bits of dirt and leaves stuck in it.  Captain Love crouched down to his level and laid his flashlight down where it could illuminate them both.  "Hey little guy, where'd you come from?"  The boy continued to stare, frozen in place.  He holstered his gun and removed his flak jacket to try and look less intimidating, more human.  He removed his hat as well and continued to talk in a voice he used to soothe his son.  The boy was starting to shiver and Captain Love resisted the temptation to pull the child into a hug.

He patted his various pockets feeling for something he could offer the boy to eat.  He found some candy that he'd stashed from an old MRE and held out the brightly colored pieces to the boy.  The boy's eyes flicked from the officer to the candy and back, still frozen in his crouched position.  Captain Love leaned in further which triggered the boy to spring forward, knocking the candy from his hand and causing him to fall back on his butt.  The sensation he felt was as if he were a balloon that someone had popped.  He watched in slow motion as the candies hit the floor and scattered in the beam of light.  His hand found a small knife protruding from between his ribs.

The boy was running for the door while the Captain's hand reached out to assure him he was not angry, even as he fell over onto the floor and sent the flashlight spinning.  He felt a wetness covering his hand and it suddenly became very hard to breathe.  The room was now spinning like a top and he tried to yell out for help, but he could not get any air to go out through his voice box.  He saw the silhouette of the boy standing in the doorway for a moment and then it was gone.  His only thought was for the boy's safety.  He did not blame him for what was his own intrusion into this place where he did not belong.  Blackness blanketed his mind.

Captain Love found himself back home in his bed and rolled over to see the silhouette of his son standing in their bedroom doorway through bleary eyes.  He did not yet have command of his voice, still caught between the worlds of sleep and wakefulness, so he gestured for the boy to come and lay with him.  The boy snuggled into his Dad's side and they watched the paddles of the ceiling fan rotate in silence above them.  His thoughts roamed through memories of shared moments like this until he noticed the ceiling slowing becoming transparent and gray skies beginning to form above the whirling blades of a helicopter.  He felt himself being lifted off the ground.

The Whale

Prince Namor was a loner and that is why Billy loved him: half human, half Atlantean with little wings at his ankles that allowed him to fly.  He was holding his own in a battle against the Incredible Hulk which is more than can be expected from someone less than half the Hulk's size.  Namor, aka "The Submariner," was also known for his quick temper and thirst for vengeance for his people.  Billy did not have a people, but he knew of that deep down anger that could come rising up out of the ocean like a new volcano.

"Billy!  Did you feed Mick-mick?" His Mom yelled from another part of the trailer.  There was no place to hide in a place so small and with walls so thin.  Billy could even hear when people used the bathroom which he thought was super gross.

"Yeah, I did!" he lied.  It was a little miserable rat dog that he thought must be his Mom's only friend in the world.  The little turd had ripped up some comic books he had stashed under his bed while he was at school and he'd never forgiven it.  They included his prized Wolverine four part series that was irreplaceable.  It was as if Wolverine himself had come slashing out of the pages with his retractable claws.  His Mom's love for the dog was the only thing that kept him from clubbing it with his baseball bat and burying it under the trailer.  He was not a monster, after all.

"Don't you have school today?" She stood in the doorway of his room with an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, hand on hip.  She was wearing a bathrobe and her hair was wrapped in a Holiday Inn towel looking like a weathered swami.

"No, it's one of those teacher day things," he lied again without looking at her over the comic book.

She lit the cigarette and then headed back down the hallway in a huff.  "Just stay out of my hair.  Rick's coming over later and you need to be somewhere else, got it?"  Her voice seemed to echo in his head in a way that was hard to explain, like it was coming from a different place.  He considered the possibility she'd somehow crossed over into the Negative Zone at the end of the hall, the walls between worlds as thin as those of their trailer.  But that was a bit too dramatic, even for him.  Maybe just wishful thinking.

"Yeah, whatever."  He felt his anger rising at the thought of Rick coming over with his condescending smile and snide remarks that made Billy feel small and inadequate.  His hands clenched into fists and his breathing quickened as he noticed them swelling up and taking on a greenish hue.  He caught himself and unclenched them, slowed his breathing, and relaxed back into his clothes.

***

It was Friday and he was playing hooky despite it being only the second month of his sixth grade year.  Middle school was a pain and he had already missed more than a few days, but no one seemed to care.

There was a chilly breeze blowing when he stepped out of the trailer and descended the rickety metal frame steps.  He pulled a frayed knit hat over his substantial head to cover the tops of his ears, but not before a chill shot through his thin frame.  The smell of burning leaves was in the air and the neighbor's St. Bernard immediately jumped up to bark at him, pulling hard at its chain.

"Shut up, Smokem!"  The matted hulk of a dog had terrified him when he was younger, but now he was just an annoyance.  As long as he avoided the packed dirt circle that indicated the range of Smokem's chain he was safe.  He drug his bike out from under the end of the trailer and hopped on, wobbling through the loose gravel until he reached the road.

To his right a scattering of rundown houses and trailers rolled by, trees at their backs demarcating the line between town and country.  Some of the yards were overgrown, littered with trash and a random assortment of rusting machines.  Even as a twelve year old he sensed it was not even really considered a neighborhood as much as a forgotten spot that most people of the town tried to pretend wasn't there.  Billy felt eyes on him from the dirty windows between slots of broken blinds.  They belonged to people who judged him harshly, he was sure of it.  He flipped the bird in that general direction, then hit the road that led into the town proper.

He scanned the street to find opportunities to pop wheelies or ramp his bike up into the air.  A fallen branch provided the first opportunity and he hit it bringing the front tire up off the ground.  It quickly came back down when the back tire hit the branch in turn.  He then veered off of the road and up onto the sidewalk via someone's driveway and pumped the pedals until flying off the end of the curb, nearly clipping the stop sign on the corner in the process.

Down a side street he caught sight of a UPS truck making its deliveries.  It was just pulling away from a house when he caught up to it and paralleled the driver sitting perched by his open sliding door.

"Hey kid, why aren't you at school?" The driver shouted over the rumble of the engine.

"I'm too cool for school, man!"  Billy thought he was being clever with his word play and was satisfied when the driver gave him a grin.  He peeled off left and made a u-turn to see what had been dropped off after he was sure the driver could no longer see him in his side mirrors.

The house looked to be a rundown cottage with high grass and gutters full of maple shoots and weeds.  He had never seen anyone at this particular house and had assumed it was abandoned.  He laid his bike down on the sidewalk and approached the covered porch while looking left and right to make sure no one was watching him.  His eye caught sight of an overturned row boat that lay in the side yard and he briefly forgot about the UPS package.  The boat was an old wooden affair with something painted in large pealing letters on the flat back side.  By turning his head sideways he was able to make out the upside down name, "CM Ishmael."  He placed his foot under a space at its point and applied upward pressure to lift it a bit and gauge if he could flip it upright.  A rustling noise underneath sent him scurrying back to the porch like a startled cat.

He waited for his heart beat to slow down, then once again scanned the immediate area to make sure he was not being observed before kneeling in front of the package.  He thought it odd that there was no writing on it, no address, no name, nothing.  He pulled a butterfly knife out of his pocket and did the flick-spin-flick motion necessary to open it.  It was one of many martial arts type weapons that he collected and practiced on regularly in order to one day defend himself or maybe even kill a small menacing animal if needs be.  His eyes flicked over to the boat to make sure nothing had emerged from underneath it.

The package covering yielded easily to his knife and he found a box with a picture of an odd device on it with the words "The Pocket Fisherman! by Ronco" emblazoned across it.  A small red square in the corner indicated "as seen on TV."  He did not have a TV.  He removed it from the box and looked to find some instructions to guide him.  It had a short folding pole connected to a plastic box with a winding reel on the side, a handle, and compartment with a bobber and some extra hooks in it.  It was a portable fishing pole, but could hardly fit in your pocket, he thought.

He heard a voice from under the boat whisper, "you are not worthy of it."

His fingers clinched around the fishing pole's handle as he bolted for his bike, not looking back.  He tried to get his bike upright and on it, but with only one hand available the bike went up and over taking him with it.  He sprawled out into the street but never let go of the handle.  With a skip, a jump, and a few wobbles he was back up on his bike and peddling away as fast as his legs would let him.

The distinctive sight of his Mom's mustard yellow Ford Pinto was disappearing over a hill going  the opposite direction when he careened around the corner and onto his road.  He dropped his bike in the yard and leapt onto the landing skipping the first two steps.  The screen door was missing its spring and slammed against the side of the trailer as he pushed though the main door and stumbled inside.  It took him a few minutes to catch his breath, hands on knees, before retreating to his room with the stolen fishing pole.

He shut his door, plopped onto the bed, and stared at the large water stain on his ceiling while waiting for his breathing to slow.  Like watching cloud formations, the stain appeared to take on various shapes the longer he lay there looking at it and it calmed him.  A school of fish circled the ceiling fan before coalescing into the shape of a whale whose mouth arced downwards, expanding, reaching for him, encircling him.  He slept.

***

When Billy awakened he knew what he had to do.  His room was dark, but some light was trickling in between the curtains.  He thought it must be some time in the early evening, having slept the day away.  He gathered up some clothes, his nunchucks, a few comic books, and shoved them all into an Army surplus backpack.  Rummaging in the back of his closet he found his stash of Halloween candy and packed that as well.  Last of all he added the pocket fisherman.

He crept out into the hallway moving quietly, but his foot immediately made contact with an empty can in the semi-darkness and sent it clanging into another.  He froze and listened for movement in the trailer.  Someone was snoring and briefly stopped.  He heard them roll over before resuming again.  Beer cans were strewn on the floor making his progress to the front door like navigating a mine field.  In the kitchen he was confronted by Mick-mick who came over to sniff his foot and then began to make a low growling noise that threatened to escalate into barking.  Billy quickly reached into a side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a beef jerky strip and pulled off a piece to give to the dog.  Micky snatched it greedily and retreated behind the couch.

The air outside was moist and a layer of fog was clinging to the ground.  It made little swirls around him as he pushed his bike to the road and then headed in the direction away from town.  The fog was thick enough to obscure the ground so that he needed to use the telephone poles and tree line to maintain himself in the middle of the road and away from the ditches on either side.  Billy marveled at the fact it was slowly getting lighter instead of darker until he realized that he must have slept all day and through the night as well.

The country road he was looking for was at least a few miles from his house and obscured by trees and overgrown brush.  The fog had lifted by the time he reached it and some sun was streaming down through the trees.  Two metal poles marked the width of its entrance, but were hard to see due to a covering of rust.  It was only their unnatural straightness that gave them away in the underbrush.  A thin chain ran between poles with a sign dangling from the center obscured by a clump of roadside weeds that he quickly stomped flat, "Town Reservoir - no swimming, fishing, or dumping."

He maneuvered his bike around one of the poles, then dropped it in the underbrush.  The trail led upwards until reaching its highest point where a visual break in the trees opened up and he found himself looking down upon a body of water a hundred or so feet farther along sitting in a natural bowl.  Near the spot where the path hit the water sat a small pump house with some pipes leading out into the water that did not look like it had functioned in quite some time.  The reservoir's size was something between a smallish lake and a largish pond.  The water was always cold, fed by water pouring out from a rocky opening that led into a cave on the far side.  Billy had discovered it the year before and it had become a place of refuge for him.

He circled around to a flattened area that sat nestled between the water and a steep hillside with a flat rock face from the cave making up the third side.  Some old wooden pallets lay in a pile against the rock that he'd collected in the past year, found in the underbrush of the surrounding forest.  They were remnants of a primitive civilization that he had stumbled upon, wooden koans of indeterminate use and purpose, or so he had convinced himself.

The cave mouth exhaled its bitter cold breath into the sunlight, murmuring in agreement.

***

The sun was directly overhead by the time Billy finished putting together his makeshift hovel.  He wrapped a bandana around his head to protect his ears and wide forehead from the sun and found perch on a boulder that sat at the water's edge.  The water was smooth and mirror-like, interrupted only by the speckling of brightly colored leaves which swirled in patterns from an unseen current that emanated from the cave's small mouth.  He thought of the swirl of fish that had formed from the water stain on his ceiling and remembered the pocket fisherman in his backpack.

Part of his packed equipment included an Army entrenching tool that had been his Dad's before he'd left for god-knows-where and never came back.  At least he'd been good for something, thought Billy.  He walked into the tree line and dug a cat hole a foot or so deep for his latrine.  The effort also yielded a few worms for a try at fishing.

Back on the boulder he hooked his worm and adjusted the bobber for a depth of a few feet.  It took him several tries to get used to the truncated rod and its stiff release button.  He was finally able to get it out about twenty feet or so and had to be content with that.  This was the hardest part, waiting for a bite and trying not to let his mind wander too far afield so that he wouldn't miss a hit on his worm.  His past experience had taught him that if you missed the first hit or two your worm was likely gone.  If you were alert and paying attention, a bounce of the bobber could trigger a twitch that might set the hook whether the fish bit it or not.

This was all well and good, but his mind was not one that could remain fixed for even a minute or two.  The Submariner was once again battling the Hulk in his mind's eye, an epic pitting of wills and brute strength.  He could almost feel the rock shake underneath him with their blows.  His mind suddenly snapped back to reality when he realized the rock had actually shook underneath him.  Not only that, but his arm holding the fishing pole was being pulled out and away from his body.

The line was not only unwinding at a high rate of speed, but it was angling downwards, not outwards.  Billy wondered at how deep this pondish lake might be and a knot of fear began to form in the pit of his stomach.  When the line reached its end, the pocket fisherman leapt from his hand and disappeared under the water.  Easy come easy go, he thought.

He scanned the surface of the water trying to make sense of what had just happened.  All sound was being drowned out by the pounding of his heart and a kind of ringing in his ears.  For the first time that day it occurred to him that his perception of reality had been fraying, but now he wondered if it hadn't snapped altogether.

Somewhere in the middle of the reservoir bubbles began to break the surface with a swell raising the contour of the water.  Billy stood transfixed, focusing on the spot, not knowing what to make of it.

An explosion of water sent him sprawling off of the boulder and face down onto the ground.  He rolled over in time to see a massive white object the size of a boxcar hurtling up out of the water, peaking, then flopping back into the water sending a tremendous wave washing over him.  The cold water sent his senses into overdrive.  The sky took on a greenish cast to Billy's eye as he felt himself changing, growing, rippling with surprise and anger.

The object resurfaced and revealed itself to be a sperm whale with its massive squared off head and small backset beady eyes.  It thrashed its back fin and sped towards Billy who could feel his clothes constricting around him and splitting as his muscles expanded and his shoes exploded off of his feet.  With the monster bearing down on him he snatched up the boulder and hurled it at its approaching head.  The impact stunned the whale and it flopped over on its side in the shallow water.  Billy-thing was immediately upon it, pounding it with his oversized fists until he was sure it was dead.

The rage coursing through him was intoxicating. Billy-thing waded farther out into the water and got ahold of the whale's back fin and drug it up onto the shore where he swept it over his head and smashed it onto the ground obliterating his hovel.  The creature's lower jaw hung open revealing its large cone-shaped teeth.  He got ahold of the jaw near its base and ripped it free from the body, then snapped it in half to form an improbable handsaw that Billy-thing used to denude its flesh until all that was left was a skeleton.  Next he lumbered into the tree line and pulled up some trees from their roots and used them to prop up the skeleton's spine.

Billy-thing was exhausted.  His massive shoulders drooped in on himself as he sat under the morbid frame of his newly constructed shelter.  He felt his body shrinking, his mind shrinking, his heart shrinking.  He felt things going black as he plopped over to the ground and fell into a deep sleep.

***

"What the hell was that?"  The two boys looked at each other in amused disbelief.

"Man!  Ol' Batty Bill went ape shit, didn't he?" The second boy laughed, but still kept his voice down for fear of waking him.  They were crouched behind some trees overlooking the reservoir and had witnessed the tattered and homeless man splashing in the water, throwing his things around, and dragging fallen branches out from the forest before lying down and seemingly falling asleep.

"Let's get out of here before he wakes up and goes berserk again."  They made their way back to the path and ran up over the hill to the road.  The smaller of the two tripped and fell, rolling over and grabbing his shin.  His friend knelt down to check on him.

"What happened?  Did you trip over something, numb nuts?"

The injured boy pushed him over and went back to rubbing his shin vigorously.  "It was something sticking out of the bushes, man."

When the pain had subsided they investigated the presumed spot and found a rusted pedal sticking up from the ground.  With some digging and tugging they pulled the deteriorating remains of an old bike out from under the dirt and undergrowth.

Life Teaches Us

Life teaches us
what we need to know if
we're willing to look and listen.
The problem with sermons, whether
from preachers, friends, or strangers
is that they are too on the nose.
It's not like we can avoid life.
Living leads to suffering &
that is the only teacher 

worth listening to.


***

The Benefits of Writing

The story lays out like bricking a path,
memories & images plucked from the past,
laid side by side and end to end without
need for mortar or any other glue, just
the weight of gravity pushing gently
downwards, squeezing out the pain.

***

A Lennon Seder

Throughout my ten years of practice as a psychiatrist I've had opportunity to work in a variety of settings and attend conferences in various parts of the United States.  I am oftentimes asked by people I've just met if I am Jewish.  I guess with my profession, having the name Aaron, sporting a beard, and wearing roundish spectacles all plays into a particular stereotype.

This afternoon I was alone for a few hours after getting home from call at the hospital.  I changed into shorts, a t-shirt, and a heavy long-sleeved shirt before realizing at some point that it was unseasonably warm for late October.  After taking the heavy shirt off and drooping it around my shoulders I walked by a mirror in our dining room and it struck me that it looked like a kind of prayer shawl.

The dining room table had been cleared during the day by my wife and a nice table cloth laid on it for her father's birthday.  They were all at a local farm for some combined family fun while I'd been working and would be coming back with the kids for dinner and cake.  There was something about the table, the shouldered shirt, the quiet house... thus was born "A Lennon Seder."


***

The Eye of the Camera

Always the spectator, director of the movie, eye of the camera.

Everyone has their role to play, some lines to say, and Action!

They break character, destroy the fourth wall, look in my eyes.

Cut!  Please pretend that I am not here, act natural, stay calm.

To be involved is to be responsible, to influence outcomes,  no,

I cannot bear that, I cannot share that, I cannot repair that so

I want to remain the spectator, director, the eye of the camera.

***

Franklin

Driving to work this morning I passed an exit sign for Franklin University which triggered thoughts of a young Nigerian-American man who attends our parish named Franklin.  I see him almost every week we are able to attend, standing quietly near the back of the church during Liturgy.

He is from the local urban community: poor, family free, and looking to do odd jobs to make a living.  I have a worn strip of paper in my wallet that he gave me a year or two ago with his name and phone number printed on it.  "General Purpose Handyman Services Offered" it reads.

My five year old loves to talk to him at Coffee Hour because his outlook is so child-like and without calculation or rancor.  My son likes him because he wears "cool clothes" that are athletic and Franklin treats him like an equal.  He is not like any other adult my son has met.

I told Franklin once that our kids look up to him and he has a responsibility to maintain their confidence in him as a role model.  He looked slightly taken aback, like he had to think about that for a bit. Then a kind of meek smile came across his face and he said, "Wow, that is really something to say.  I will try my best."

I knew very little about him, only that he was born in Nigeria and his family was not around.  I never learned why he is living here alone.  I never learned why he chose to come to our church so faithfully as a quiet presence.  The only thing I know for sure about him now is that he died on Friday at thirty years of age.

May his memory be eternal.

***

My Personal Apocalypse

When the end of days arrives 

so much 

that seems to mean 

so much

will be revealed to mean 

so little. 

Amen, amen, and amen.

***

Serenade

The curtain rises on Balanchine's "Serenade"

revealing rows of pale blue ballerinas, each

with an extended arm and outward facing palm

looking as if to shield their eyes from the sun.

Their alabaster limbs are frozen in place and

no one has moved even a solitary finger when

the scene starts to blur, a glowing cloud-like

opacity that melts the stage into formless colors.

It's not until I feel the solitary drop of water

rolling down my cheek that I realize it is neither

a cloud, nor rain, nor any other meteorological

phenomenon, but simply a middle-aged man

overcome by a sense of beauty that he cannot

describe or explain, but simply feels and reacts.

***

The Inner Universe

I used to love to find a quiet place and read for at least an hour or two when I was younger.  It was pure escapism, and in many ways indistinguishable in purpose from abusing drugs.  It differed in that it allowed for the natural flow of thoughts and emotions without force or biochemical violence.  I could plow through books of six, seven, or even eight hundred pages in a relatively short amount of time.  What a trip!

But then life came along and started adding time constraints and responsibilities that ate into my reading time until now, in my forties with a wife, two kids, and a demanding job I just enjoy being in a library or bookstore even though I know that most all of these books will likely be forever out of my reach.

To resume the drug analogy, there is a rush of sorts in the addict's brain by just thinking about drugs, having the paraphernalia at hand, and being in the place where using it happens.  It's not that I won't eventually have more time again, but my attention span has shrunk with age and I am increasingly dependent on coffee to muster the kind of sustained focus I had as a kid.

As a kind of end run I am now trying to use some of my time to write.  Ultimately I would love to unpack my sizable collection of books that I've been collecting since before Middle School from their boxes and surround myself with them, maybe taking over one of the kids' rooms after they've left home to start their own lives.  A writing desk at the window might not be a bad idea either.  It is all a part of exploring the inner universe that most spiritual traditions insists is bigger than the external one.

***

The Apotheosis of E. Kramer

He'd always been a consistent pitcher,

good for several strike outs if the kids
were prone to watch and not swing,
but maybe that underestimates him.
Starting in third grade he was known
for his accuracy if not his speed due
to his diminutive size among his peers.
At ten years old he had started to speed
things up a bit to outwit even the swingers.
But then he turned eleven and a capper
of sorts happened on the last game of
the season against a team with 12 and
13 year old giants as tall as his Dad.

He somehow found a new gear without
disrupting his affinity for the strike zone.
He was in his fourth straight inning of
pitching and the score was tied one all.
Bases were loaded with no outs in an
inning that looked to be a blow out.
Nine pitches were thrown, nine strikes
called, and parents from the opposing
team were grumbling about "fairness."
The catcher had called "time out" twice to
take off his mitt and shake out his hand.
It was the apotheosis of E. Kramer,
the shortest kid in the sixth grade.

***

I was working at the hospital today and missed my son's last game of the season.  I could have caught the last few innings, but instead I'd set up a family meeting to participate in an intervention with a patient that turned out to be one of the most fulfilling things I've done in my career.  I caught the fam at Dairy Queen afterwards where the coach was treating the team.  This poem came from information I gathered from my son, my wife, and his coach about what had transpired during the game.

***

Fishing Trip

We loaded the motorcycles into my Dad's van
and headed to my sister's boyfriend's trailer
on the edge of the Hoosier National Forest.

His mother and step-father were poor as dirt,
building what they needed, drinking from a
spring, hunting for food in the deep woods.

It was almost an hour drive from our small town.
We rolled the bikes down out of the van on a two
by six and duct taped fishing poles to the bikes.

We rode on isolated roads past countless trees,
parked, and made our way through a quarter mile
of thicket to a crystal clear pond full of fish.

We could see the fish and the fish could see us,
the element of surprise and the bait trick lost,
resulting in no bites and so we moved on.

The second pond was bigger and murkier,
sitting on a farmer's land so that we had to hide our
bikes and sneak around the back of it on high alert.

I caught a large bass but my line got tangled.
My sister's BF had to help untangle it to get the
fish in, later taking credit for the catch with my pole.

On the way back we were flying down a country
road and a curve came up that was too much for
the speed I was traveling and I backed off the gas.

I was suspended in the space between road and fence,
coasting, because braking in gravel would have broke
traction and sent me into the fence line for sure.

I held my breath, terrified, riding the line between
life and death, or at the very least severe injury, in
the middle of nowhere, no help for miles and miles.

I slowed enough to eventually pull out of it, the seconds
seeming like several minutes, my sister's BF riding in front
of me oblivious to the averted disaster in his side mirror.

We rolled the motorcycles back up into the van and
headed back to my house with the big fish and a
realization that life can be short in a small town.


***

Dedicated to Benjy, a bright-eyed and beautiful boy who died after being thrown from a motorcycle in the country when I was a teen.  I somehow avoided a similar fate.


***

The City Sleeps