Run.

Run as fast as you can because I cannot save you but I can tell you to run because I know that I am running.I am running because it is a race. It is a race that must be run well and with vigor and with passion and humility. The shit thing about this race is that being last means being first and being first means being last.

So run with me! Run. run now. run with me. run. now.

Don't pick up the things that are to your left and to your right and don't look back.

If someone starts running beside you then hold their hand and run with them and if they fall hold them up and if they die then laugh and sing and yell.

Strip all your clothes off and run naked because they are only holding you back and it's time to leave these things behind and to focus on the goal and to forget about what is happening in the now.

And remember to forget your shoes for by doing so we allow others to follow the trail of blood that our soles leave behind. By it they will see the stride of our step and the pattern of our path.

I am telling you to start running now because I have a feeling deep down in the wrinkles of my stomach that the race is almost done and that when it's done and I won't be able to come back and I won't be able to help you and most likely I won't remember you if i see your face.

So run. Run.

The Whale, The Fox and Mr. Bagell (Parts I-IV)

Part I

I am sitting next to the lake. I have been holding this orb of light in my hands for over two hours now and I cannot depart one seconds time of my gaze from its unparalleled beauty.

I found it
I found it in the dark
I found it in the place where no one ever looks
I found it when I was not even longing for it

I sit on this cold rock and my feet sink ever so slightly into the silty muck of the lakeshore; the muck oozes through my toes like it did in my youth. The house is far away to the east and the rest of my family sleeps soundly in their beds knowing the joy, pain, love and reverence that they live out everyday.

I am not worried about anything. It’s almost as if I have never worried about anything in my whole life. The water is as still as the spirit within me. Then, without one sound or rustling there is a fox at my side. His name is Pure and he talks quietly to me about staying calm and remembering what love means and how this will all end for some but that for me this is only the blink of the beginning. He tells me about staying on the good road and about remembering rules that are coated in gold.

Pure has a very thick coat and his tail seems to exude light from its end. His voice is like a warm cloak that sets itself upon the hearts of men. He speaks very slowly and very quietly and as I stare at the orb I strain to catch every last letter that is dripped from his mouth. And then as if he were never there I am alone again there on the rock with my toes sinking in the silt.

No paw prints
No fur on the mud
No smell of canine or fox or whatever it is that they are
Time has past but how much I am not sure

It’s then that the orb, Whale I will call it, begins to change color. I wish with the fullness of my whole being that I could in some form or fashion describe to you these colors. But, I do not know their names or their hews or their origins and my mind is not large enough or wide enough to capture them fully and because of this I apologize.

Whale shows me things
Whale turns memories into lessons
Whale loves me so he scolds me
Whale makes a char filled brain clean and clear

Whale showed me all of his colors and shapes and then inside of him I began to see them. They danced around and were all connected and were all made of the colors that Whale had been showing me. There was no sound but I could still hear them singing and stomping their feet and slapping their thighs. Whale never spoke but I could feel his words on my heart like stickers on a binder. They were there to stay; they were never going to be taken away.

They clung but not a needy way
They wanted to be there
I wanted them there more than they wanted to be there
I am not sure if this is true

Whale dimmed and those that were in him went away and the colors reverted back to white and everything in my head got still and quiet again. My inability to divert my gaze was cut and my head jerked back and my eyes rolled in their sockets and my face rushed with blood. I think it has been ten minutes. The air still feels the same and the stars seem to be in the same places they were before. The moon still low in the east.

The orb sat cradled in the silt of the lakes shore and inside it was what seemed to be a low burning candle. The flame was low and it flickered and it did not give off much light but for some reason I do not feel like Whale will ever go out. Ever. Never. Ever.


I sat up and the wet shirt on my back clung to my skin and my body is cool and I feel relaxed and very tired. I look out on the lake and I see a figure on the other side. It is large and roundish in the center and it saunters in big lumbering steps from side to side. It takes me a few moments to realize but the figure in walking the edge of the shore and is coming towards me. He’s huge.

He?
Is it a male?
Yes, He.
He.

I stare up at him even while standing. But not just up, ninety-degree angle up. The kind of up that people talk about when they are referring to skyscrapers. He is an enormous bear. He’s not a bear that I have ever seen nor is he one that I can affiliate with species that I have seen on the television or in books. His fur is flowing but thick and rough like straw. His paws remind me of large mitts of leather and knives. Hit snout and teeth deserve respect.

He stares out over the lake and over the land and up at the stars and at the moon and he sniffs loudly and he blinks frequently. At this point I am unsure as to whether or not he knows I am even there. But then he speaks.

“Quite the evening I must say.”

His voice is so deep that I can feel my ear drums vibrate and rattle. My heart murmurs and stops for a split second and my breath is knocked out of me and I go blind. Then I blink and I can see again. My eyes water and everything is silhouetted and the hair on the back of my neck rises and falls.

“Do you not think so?”

I am still catching my breath and try to push out a yes to his face that towers above me. This bear speaks very slowly and lingers and meditates on every word that is spoken.

He seems brilliant
He seems to know a lot about things that I don’t
He seems to eat well
His voice reverses the invention of fear

“Bagells the name.”

I am unsure as to what the next move is. I keep exchanging glances between Mr. Bagell and the stars that sit atop his head. Brilliance sat atop his shoulders.

“Do you know Whale?

I ask it like a child. I ask it as though his answer may or may not complete my life. His face twists and his eyes wonder and he scratches under his chin and picks me up and places me on his shoulder.

“Walking is a good way to spend a conversation.”

I didn’t agree or disagree. The drop from his shoulders was easily twenty feet. I was along for the ride. His fur was very comfortable though so I am fine with it and we walked along the side of the lake.

“I know Whale. Have you met Fox? I love Fox.”

I say, “Yes, I met Fox in the silty mud.”

“Fox is very quiet. Fox speaks for me most of the time.” Mr. Begell says.

All of this seems very vague and simple. I want to know if this bear knows Whale and if he does what is Whale? Who is Fox? Why am I not in bed?

Part II

I am cold and my butt is numb and the door creaked as I walked into the cabin where the rest of my family was asleep. My watch got water in it when I was swimming four days earlier and so now I can’t tell what time it is but the sun is peeking up over the tree line so I know that I have to get in bed now or my parents will know that I was gone all night.

Mr. Bagell talked so slowly that in the time we spent together he only made out about seven or eight whole sentences. That’s fine though, everything he said was gold, pure gold that glimmered in a night so dark that without his words we would not have known where we were going.

I am so tired
How are my eyes open?
Where are my shoes?
I don’t care

Brother is sleeping in a ball on his bed with no covers and the only thing he has on are his whitey tighties. He’s twelve but when people we don’t know get invited over to the house by our parents he talks to them as if he were an old Englishman with a vocabulary that resembles that of the child of a dictionary and an etiquette manual for young adults.

I’m undressed with my shorts on and as I lie here my calves are burning and my head is spinning and by butt is still numb because, even though Mr. Bagell is a nice and kind individual, his shoulder is not. His fur is thick and when I sat in it I sank but after a short time the hair began to itch the back of my legs and without being able to maneuver much I was stuck with a numb butt for some time.

I can’t remember anything
I can’t remember what he said
I can’t recall one single word
Did he even speak?

I fall asleep with my hair sticking with sweat to my forehead and a light steam rising from the damp warmth of my chest. I am asleep.

Part III

I am awake.

My watch is completely lifeless now. The incessant ticking that I had once found so unbelievably annoying was now gone and it made me sad. That was my dad’s watch.

Mom is in the garden, Dad on the porch, brother most likely in the woods and sister is asleep in her crib in the back room that was once a sewing room but now it is her room and not a sewing room. My mother, when I was younger would make all of my clothes back in that room but now I am too old and I prefer to get my clothes from the stores in the city.

I am walking outside when I see Whale. He’s just sitting there in the middle of mom’s garden in a patch of kale. Mom doesn’t even notice him. Dad doesn’t notice him.

Is he there?
Can they see him?
He is still dim
In the garden?

I am not going to go out to him yet because I never go into the garden and my mom will be wondering why I am all of the sudden taking interest in the garden and if she hasn’t seen Whale yet then she definitely will at that point and due to this a lot of questioning will happen and I have no answers about anything. So I stay inside. I walk back to my room and I sit down on the bed. I have to go to the Lake.

Put shirt on
Open window
Go out window
Run to lake

“FOX?!”

“FOX?!”

“FOX?!”

I am not very interested in Mr. Bagell right now because he talks much too slowly and I need answers and I need them in a quick fashion. I think Fox can help me in this way.

“FOX?!”

The silt of the lakeside is drying and cracking and my toes have nothing to sink into so I just sit on the rock again and look out onto the water and wonder if I really just dreamt up everything last night. But that couldn’t be because my calves were still sore this morning and my shirt still had mud on it from the lake.

“Fox!” I yelp.

“Hello boy, why do you yell as you do?”

“Do you know Whale?” I ask.

“Yes, I know Whale. He is me and I am He and We are We.”

I am confused and I fear that if I ask Fox why Whale is in my mother’s garden that he will give me an answer to which I will need an equation to understand. So I stay quiet. Fox has never looked at me. He just looks out at nothing I suppose. He is very still and I try to pet him but my arm can’t ever seem to reach him no matter how close he seems but he is always near.

Fox’s tale I have told you about. His paws are perfect white even when he walks through the mud and the field and the water and the muck. His nose is black like death and his eyes are deep and dark and they taunt me with the wondering thought that they just might hold the answers to the universe. His fur is a shade of orange that Whale showed me.

“Fox, who are you?”

“I am your helper, boy.”

“OK.”

I decide to not ask him about Whale but rather I straight to the point.

“Fox, I need you to get Whale out of my mom’s garden.”

“Boy, I can’t do that. Whale is everywhere. You will be seeing much of him now.”

I turn to ask him what he means but as I turn he is gone and a wind blows and my hair flips up over my ear and I see some clouds rolling in. It’s going to rain. I head home.

Part IV

“Boy.”

“Boy, come to me, boy.”

I am sitting in a kitchen chair balancing on the two back legs trying to keep myself from touching the wall behind me. I am facing west with the sun streaming in through the bronze screen door onto my face and my bare chest. I am skinnier than normal this summer and my mother continues to fill my plate at dinner with more food than I could eat even if I were starving. She thinks me sickly. I’m just not hungry.

“Boy.”

I had been ignoring it for about fifteen minutes when I knew that I had to get up and see where the voice was coming from. Yep, it’s whale. The orb sits in a nook of a huge oak tree at the corner of the front yards eastward fence line. Dad and mom are sitting on the porch in the warmth of the summer sun drinking hard tea and holding hands. Brother is down at the lake fishing with Tim Urman; a local boy who lives on the next ranch to the west. Sister is lying fast asleep on a blanket in-between my mom and dad on the porch.

“Boy.”

It’s a loud but gentle whisper that carries with it a wind, a breeze.

“Here I am boy.”

I look at mom and dad. They don’t seem to hear anything.

“Boy, I am here in the branches. Come to me.”

I look back one more time to see my parents with eyes closed and heads reclined back onto the chairs where they sit. I move slowly towards and tree keeping one eye on Whale and one eye on my parents.

Still no movement
Everything quiet
Am I deaf?
The grass is cool under my feet

“Boy, are you listening?”

This is the first time Whale had ever asked me a direct question and I was confused because he had no mouth or ears or anything to justify a response from a sane person of sound judgment. Why should I, a sane young man, be talking to a glowing orb?

“I am.” I was.

Bolt.

His ear drum is busted and her knee is blown out and when she goes for a light jog she always comes back aching.

He can't play soccer the way he used to and she has arthritis in her left hand fingers and when it's cold they hurt.

We aren't old. We know this.

But we can see the gears rusting and the bolts loosening and we think back to that time when we couldn't imagine ever aging beyond the age of thirteen.

A pipe on the wall.

He ran down the basement stairs and carefully stepped behind the boxes of his mom's old romance novels and made sure not to knock them over and finally kneeled down into a ball in the space between the water heater and the wall but there was a pipe that ran from the sewer to the laundry room on the wall and it jabbed into his side and it pinched the skin on his ribs and it made him yelp. Yelp. yelp. A yelp that even a mouse could not have made but it was just enough for the man in the red jacket to hear and then it was over and the boy lie dead in between the water heater and the wall with the pipe that ran to the laundry room.

Learning how to pay a mortgage with no income.

The 86' Oldsmobile pulled into the drive through the four foot snow drift and parked in front of the house. An icing of white covered the yard and the trees and the bushes and the lawn mower that was left running idle until it had run out of gas. She had not moved it since that day. She just found comfort in knowing that he had been the last person to touch it and that he was doing his husbandly duty when it all happened.

She walked inside through the garage door and told Jeremy to go to his room and change out of his suit and coat and to come and watch TV with mommy. As he walked down the dimly lit hall to his room she fell into the kitchen chair that he would always sit in at meals. She slowly removed her black gloves and her black veil that she had worn because it looked classic and her mother before her had always told her that classic was in style no matter what the occasion. But in this instance she wondered if that even mattered now and she was pretty sure that it didn't.

All the lights in the house were off and the blinds were open and the gray winter light poured in like a thick soup. The house was luke warm and she could barely feel the air on her skin but she knew it was there because she felt the inkling to take a razor blade and hack into her wrists so that she didn't have to live the coming portion of her life. She sat there wondering how she would ever learn to fix the disposal or how she would teach Jeremy to throw a curve ball or how in the world she would be able to pay off the mortgage.

Jeremy was watching the TV with lights twinkling and images cycling and she wondered how in the world she could do it alone. Then she looked over to the end of the table and saw his ball cap. She hated it. It smelled bad and the red had faded to a dirty yellow sweaty gray and was torn near one of the seems on the left side. But he loved it because it was the first gift that she had ever gotten him. They had gone to a baseball game their junior year of college and he was working while going to school and was dirt poor and really wanted a ball cap so she bought him one. He loved it because he loved baseball and he loved it even more because she had bought him something that represented something that he loved very much. And she loved this. She loved that he found comfort and so great a nostalgia in something so simple.

She walked over to the other end of the table and picked up the hat and smelled it and looked it over. It still stunk but she didn't care because it was his stink and she knew that in two or three months the smell would be gone and then she would have to remember the smell and it scared her because she knew that she would never be able to get that cap to smell the same way ever again.

So that night she put Jeremy to bed and tucked him in and sang him a song and watched over him as he fell into dreams. Then she walked slowly into their bedroom with eyes watered by tears and lips quivering and shed her clothing and laid down naked under her sheets with his ball cap on his pillow. Her fingers ran over the indention of the mattress where his body should have been but was there no more. And as the moonlight poured in like verses of angel speak her eyes grew heavy and her muscles fell limp and her breath deepened and shortened and her mind shut off and sleep came.

She would figure out how to pay the mortgage tomorrow or the next day but for now she had to go meet someone. Someone who she could only meet in her dreams.

This is a general statement by a boy on how girls are so much prettier than anyone gives them credit for.

My God!

How do You do it?

I look at her picture and her skin is so much more perfect than mine and her eyes are set perfectly apart and her lips are the fullness that they were called to be. I watch her walk and I am astonished at her confidence and at how she could care less about who is around her or who it is that might be thinking whatever it might be that they are thinking.

She just reads her books and lays on the grass patches that she finds fit and watches the waves curl and the sun set and the moon rise and the stars wink.

she touches her hands together and even the wrinkles of her palms and the webbing in between her fingers are things to be written about. They are the things that we dream about subconsciously along with mid-evil hero tales and falling off of buildings and not dying.

Her hair is something that cannot be described. It's like trying to describe what wind looks like or what color the notes are that the old man is playing on the piano. There just is no way to tell someone about those types of things. No way.

How I was made.

He took the string and the needle and placed the broken body down on the wooden table and began to stitch.

His insides looked like the scattered thoughts of a windmill and the task at hand was one that should have been dubbed the term “beyond repair.”

But never the less he tied the not in the string and began the work.

When birds stop reading books.

The last pages had been flipped and it read THE END.

He sat quietly on the front porch and watched as the sun danced its last dance with the mountains, he sipped his beer. The sounds of zipping zippers and moving drawers and clothes being folded only reminded him of all the times before. The times when those sounds only meant that within the next two days her car would pull back into the gravel drive and she would be crying and she would run to him and hug him and he would say things like “It’s OK” and “Let me grab your bag.”

But this time he didn’t have any care left in him and that’s why he sat on the front porch just sittin’, not really thinking about anything. This time he didn’t care to stand in the old wooden doorway to their bedroom and plead and beg and fight and strain and talk and yell. He didn’t want to have to keep a bird caged that only wanted to fly. He didn’t want to be a warden of the free.

The pages to this chapter in the book had been read and turned so many times that the words had lost all their meaning and he had finally set the book on the end table for the last time. The book was old and tattered and he was tired of having to read the yellowed pages.

She walked out of the front screen door and stood with her toes hanging over the edge of the front porch with bags in hand, just staring out, never turning her head. The car door slammed and the engine turned over reluctantly and the tires crunched over the gravel and her taillights faded away.

What do you do when one bird in the hand is not worth two in the bush? What do you do when alone means better?

He sat there with the sweat from the can seeping into his faded jeans and just rested easy knowing that the sun would set tonight and it would rise again in the morning and even if it didn’t, he had everything he needed right there in the cave of his chest.

How one thing may seem like something but it’s really something totally different and in reality you are most likely dreaming.

Part I. What things may seem to be.

Shelby is 28.

She has a nice apartment in a nice district in town. Her things are nice and her job is nice and her attitude about life is nice.

Everyday after work Shelby gets home, throws her keys on the side table, flips off her shoes and slumps into the couch where she will, like most nights, remain until she got hungry enough to go make dinner and then go to bed.

It’s a routine so engrained in her subconscious that she can’t even recognize the pattern of mediocrity has solidified.

But, Shelby Lynn Jackson was not always this way. At one time you would never have described her with words such as "routine" or "pattern" or "shoes." But time had passed and maturity had been thought of as essential and the color in her wardrobe has become bland and her laughter faded to polite chuckles that appeased the masses that filled office doorways and smoke filled bars.

She was raised near a creek in a rural town where Friday night football and summer romances trumped the business of the world. When she was seventeen she spent her last summer there in that most magical of places. This creek in the nowhere places was the place where girls would find boys. It’s the place where boys would chase after girls all the way to their porch fronts. This was the summer of playing in creeks with boys.

Part II. What things are.

Shelby is the girl in the red cloak.

She walks down streets that were thought up in minds that are strewn with cobwebs and snares. She carries a dagger in a small sheath inside her left boot. Her dark brown hair is constantly up in tails and her eyes are always watching. Watching for him. Watching for the one who caused her to have this abnormal, sideways, underneath life. Shelby had never seen him but she knew him well.

She walks quietly and slowly but with absolute purpose, every step with poise and caution.

She is the girl in the red cloak.

A Borrowing of Ideas from Gregory Alan Isakov.

I want to borrow the tree line from God.
I want miles of fence line.
I need open skies.
I want the fields and the orchards.

Let the cities fall and fail.
Let the pillars and beams give way.
Neglect the repairs and needs of concrete.
Let yellow lined mazes crumble beneath me.

Give me being lost in the woods.
Give me stars for sleepy viewing.
Give me manna from the sky.
Give me a pillar of fire by night.

My Heart is a Cabin Deep in the Woods.

My heart is a cabin deep in the woods.

In it resides a man.

The thicket his companion.
Birds his song.

My heart is a cabin deep in the woods.

In it resides a carpenter.

The hammer his lover.
Pine his muse.

My heart is a cabin deep in the woods.

In it resides a groom.

His suit a dusty mess.
Cufflinks rusted.

My heart is a cabin deep in the woods.

In it resides its builder.
In it resides its keeper.
In it resides its owner.

Him to her.

Where are you wife?

Where have you gone little one with the long hair?
Lie down and rest your head on the backs of my knees.

I will run my fingertips along those bumpy shinbones. The ones that tell the stories of a little beauty who cared nothing for dresses or rouge.

In the middle of the night you’ll come to me and tell me stories about a broken heart and feet torn and tattered by years of wandering. And I, I will sit and listen and rub the ache from the skin of your back.

I am the Husband of husbands.
I am the Groom of grooms.

I am the one who walks you down the isle, who calls you with a whisper, and the one waiting at the alter.

When your knees fail and the skin of your palms has all but shed I will be there.
I am there.
I am here.

That boy who left you standing in your front lawn with your self-esteem in the red, I love him too. But come to me. Leave him to his devices and to me.

Where are you darling sweetness?

Come near me and rest your eyes for a time.