My son had three chairs lined up just the way he likes them.  He walked back and forth on the tops of them. At almost two years old, he comes up with some interesting ways to entertain himself.  He got close to me and growled and fell into my arms.  Then he got up do to it a thousand times more.  He laughed as he walked away on the chair tops.  It is a cold winter, and his stocking cap left his thin hair standing up in dual cowlicks on the back of his head.  His brown eyes glowed, while he was slapping his feet down.  Seeing how much attention I was giving him, my oldest daughter who just turned ten, moved over and sat down beside me.  My son became instantly angry, and she yelled back at him.  I understand that she wants my attention, after all not too long ago, it used to be just me and her.  She has plenty of opportunities to hang out with her dad.  In this moment, the three chairs had zero value to her, until her brother found joy and comfort in them.

I hugged my daughter tight, and I whispered in her ear a secret just for us.  “Sweetheart, you had your time with this age.  I still love you, you are growing up so fast and I am so proud of you.  I need you to understand, that your brother finds comfort in the simple things he does with his dad.  It hurts him when you take it away.  Tell ya what, let’s take the truck out after I get off work tomorrow and have us a coffee date.”  She smiled and we exchanged a high five, sealing the deal.  She just has hot chocolate, but we call it coffee for show.  She smiled and walks away.  My son, full of joy, resumes his game.

***

The tubed florescent lights cast out a synthetic plastic like glow onto the dented and worn linoleum floor of the break room.  The factory schedule was routine and predictable.  The same was true for where everyone would sit.  Employees congregated in the break room around the same time like clockwork.  Many ate the same things.  Today would be different.  Today the break room would house and explosion.  Different work groups, and different departments often times may experience tension.  Talking dries up, humanity is lost, and emotions became deep dark caves that hold explosives, like a forgotten mine.

Today, two workers decided to stage a protest of their over their perceived injustice at the seating arrangement.  They smirked, laughed, and gave their anger time to ramp up.  In a few moments it happened, the break room began to populate.  A worker with dirty coveralls, calloused hands, and a direct heart said, “Hey go sit at your own table.”

I sipped coffee out of my periodic table coffee mug, a safe distance away from the scene that was unfolding.  The artillery fire of ‘F’ bombs exploded in the room.  The secret caves of emotion, hatred, and resentment level,  instantly saturated the social framework of the room.   It ended as quickly as it began.  A heavy silence hung in the air.  Soon, break was over, and everyone filed out.  Except for me and the bomber.  “Can you believe these guys?”  he yelled over to me.  I assume he was attempting to enlist an ally to join his war.  I took another sip of my hot coffee.  “All they got hear is sock water man…” I said not looking at him.  I dumped it out into the sink, washed my cup, and put it away.   I thought about how, perhaps for some, routine is the only anchor that helps them survive the storm of the work day, or life itself for that matter.  It’s not simply a chair, and it has nothing to do with anyone else.  I soaked in my thoughts, like a soothing hot tub on a winters day.  The air around the conversation was cold.  There was ice here, that I didn’t have the strength to try and melt.

“Well?  Don’t you think this is messed up?”  The bomber shouted.

“Sorry man, I am a little distracted” I said with a smile, “I have a coffee date after work today!”

 

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert

The underwater world is different from the dry world above.  I invade the submerged realm often to make my living.  I lay out nets made of thick and twisted rope.  The water saturates the cords, and tries to loosen my knots.  I use sharpened metal in the form of fish hooks and spears.   I harvest fish from the deep waters.  I turn the writhing mass into metal when I claim my wages.  I am a master of the waters and my trade.

If a fish crosses the barrier from its world to mine, it dies.  The hot air dries its scales.  Its mouth gulps in empty motions.  The heavy, wet life giving liquid is taken away.  If a man falls into the vastness of water, life is taken quickly.  Lungs fill with water, arms, and legs kick and twist.  Soon, he turns from a trashing invader, to squishy food.  Most try and hold fast to the side they belong on, because, to cross the threshold is death.

The most important piece of metal I carry is my sword.  Upon the sandy shores, and rocky merchant passes, the lazy scavengers plot to steal my prize.  When the fish feel my metal piercing their scales they know the end is near.  Thieves and Robbers share the same look of fear and defeat when my sword finds their soft warm skin.  Blood has a profound way of changing minds.   To steal my prize, my living, and my pride, it will cost you.   I have found that most cowards, do not wish to pay.

One day I found myself torn.  I was persuaded to leave my wooden boat, my twisted nets, and my metal tools of the fishing trade behind.   Deep inside of me I felt I may have found the greatest catch of all in this new chapter of my life.  My new companion seemed to think differently of people.  I saw of few familiar faces of those thieves who had crossed my path and failed.   They looked upon me with fear, and upon my new companion with hope.

I became mesmerized with his knowledge and power that I never wished to part ways.  His company was the biggest catch of my life.  It seems, that in time my metal would rust, it seemed out of place now.  As fate is often cruel, a hand full of soft metal stole my cherished company.  Silver, metal to soft for work, but just cold enough for betrayal.  I tried to attack the thieves, but my companion stopped me.  He allowed himself to be taken.  I could have stopped them, yet I found myself lost and angry.  My catch, my work, and my hope was taken.  I followed the mob, the night air too weak to cool my anger.

I watched them take him to a fortification for questioning.  I stood at a distance, angry, and confused.  I needed  to think.  It seemed that the metal that I have depended on to stay alive would sit idle during my companions death.   I was deep in thought by a fire, three people said they knew me.  They said I knew him.  I was scared and angry.  I denied it.  I used all I had left to fend them off, my anger.  During my last outburst my companion’s eyes found mine.  In that moment, my heart was broken so  I ran away crying.

My friend, my teacher, my hope, was killed shortly thereafter.  They used rope and metal to tear his warm skin.  In the same way I would mount fish to a board to gut them. They used heavy metal to hold him in place on twisted splintery wood.  Instead of gutting him, they hung him high in the hot air.  They let him die slow.  It reminded me of a fish gulping empty air on the coarse wooden planks of my boat.  That moment a fish surrenders its life, so that a person will be able to eat it. A life for a life.  A price paid in full by deaths bloody grasp.

 

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert

“Don’t run!  You’ll fall on your bazottle!”  my mom shouted out with a smirk.  She used to  make up or modify words to be funny.  “I will use this Christmas wrapping paper roll as a whep-uhn!”  I incorporate the same dialogue with my wife these days, “Hey stop hoggin’ the covers!  You are going to Pla-srurb my beast.”  The beast, being our little dog Charlie.

Mom would often use her dog for conversation, “Molly sure misses you, she likes it when you come and visit.”  I think back on those moments and smile.  As a dad today, I use our cocker spaniel poodle to make my family laugh.  The dog will make a weird face and I will say, “Sorry about eating the trash, but uh… I’m just a dog, man.”  My kids will laugh and laugh.  My middle daughter has started up a story book and she wrote that one of the cats was giving her “the stink eye”.  I smiled and cried a little, because that kind of talk all started with my mom.

In March 2017, it will be nine years since she passed away.  I miss her perpetually.  But I often find a way to smile, when I see her echo in something I say, something I see in my kids, or something off the wall in a dog’s silly voice over.

 

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert

A red beautiful blood cell, looks like a lush red planet floating in space.  It’s doom soon arrives as small landing craft attaches to its surface.  The invader has many forms; a ball like sea creature with tentacles,  a brownish thumbtack covered in boils, or perhaps a black half moon that looks like a rotten potato chip.  No matter the shape or origin, they all have the same purpose.  To corrupt the natural function of the cell.  They drop twisted designs into the warm cell like radioactive string.  Tiny threads of data, thinner than a spider web.   The evil slips in unnoticed.  The virus does the only thing it knows how, infects.  The strands of lies are picked up and incorporated in the machinery of the cell.  The cell begins cloning the viruses.  Its doom is sealed.  Virus after virus is made without end.  Pumping out units, a slave to its new twisted mandate, the once red beautiful cell, is now an agent of evil.  One last virus forces the cell walls to explode.   An armada of viruses is released.  They drift in the void, waiting for a place to land.

***

A break room with white tiles and florescent lights begins come alive. Hot water makes swooshing noises as writhes and twisting in the copper pipe of the coffee maker.  A warm soothing aroma of roasted and ground coffee fills the air.  People begin to congregate around tables and chairs.  Soon, words take flight.  An army of invisible butterflies land hard on the soft fleshy beaches of all the ears in the room.  They crawl down the listening canal quickly.  Tumbling hot metal spikes, dig deep into the the cavern floor.  Then they find their waiting prize.  The brain lies in a darkened tomb of bone.  Electrical flashes and sparks dance within and around the mass.  The words crawl inside.  They burrow, infest, and begin to multiply.  Before long, the brain becomes toxic.  It is reprogrammed by the evil words and is now sending out directives to the mouth, that are the exact same twisted tails that poisoned it.  The body roams finding new victims to infect.  The proverbial heart begins its death march.  It is no longer red and beautiful.  It becomes rigid, atrophied, and full of thick black tar.  People all around, begin leaving tracks of sorrow everywhere they go, like invisible mucous.

***

Decay and rot will overtake moral in seconds.  When attitude is built on a love for people however,  the virus can only multiply its value and numbers by zero.  It dies, immediately after falling off the inflamed belts of the assembly line.  Its power is zero.   A social immune system is built on God.  To see every human being as his creation is difficult.  To love past a comment takes strength.  To love higher than a mistake takes courage.  To love through hate takes more cutting power than a mighty drill cutting through mountain rock.  Loving people is much like working out in the gym.  Reps will build strength.  Strength will yield results.  Results will change lives.  A positive attitude is welcomed by sickened minds.  I believe people want to be happy, deep down inside.  When I get sick with the flu, my main thought and wish is for it to be over.  If there was a way to end my suffering in a moment.  I would take it.  Thinking socially, if someone can walk into a room and encourage, excite, and relax people.  Shouldn’t such a virus killer do so.  Yes!  It takes practice.  I have to hit the refueling station every day in conversation with my creator.  I purge all of the tarred filth out of my heart.  I talk it loose.  I cough out contagion, and set free my rage.  He can take it.  He wants it.  It is a component of our relationship.  Then after multiple reps of “Thank you God for this,” and “Thank you God for that!”  I have a pumped up attitude to blanket the people in my life with some ‘thank yous’.  I want them to see the value they have to me.  If there are 10,000 wrongs, I still find 1 to raise high upon the pedestal of spoken thankfulness.  In time, the saturation of brain viruses begins to die.  Like a ripple of sunshine in the social group, infection begins to die.  The dark night of the viral invasion is over.  Smiles begin to form like the sun rising on the horizon, shedding light on what is truly important in life.

 

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert

The cold air envelopes my skin in its arctic teeth.  I look for shelter.  I have no home, no warmth, and no hope.  My fingers are numb.   My tattered coat flaps in the wind.  I see lights glowing in the guts of warm houses.  I wish I was inside.   I see parked vehicles. I wish I was inside.  Ice cycles hang everywhere.  Christmas lights hold a soft glow as steam rises into the cold night air from frosted roofs.  The snow creaks and pops under my frozen boots.  I would sleep in a garage, or in a dumpster if I could find one.   My body is numb,  it hurts to breathe.  I fall face first into a snow drift.  The cold snow melts on my face for a moment.  Is this what hell would feel like?  A forgotten soul, lost in a blanket of pain.  I hurt in darkness, then suddenly, I am gone.

***

A migraine headache squeezes the pulp of my brain.  My head is an over inflated tire trapped in the bone of my skull.  There is an ache behind my eyes.  Pressure, ache, severe pain.  People talk to me, it hurts.  Light, movement, music, life, it all hurts.  I lay in a dark room with a cold washrag over my eyes and on my forehead.  I see spots like fireflies dance in arcs on my eye lids.  I have to listen to music I never listen to.  White noise.  If I know the words, it hurts.  I shift in bed, and move my pinky finger.  Perpetual pain.  An electrical storm within the flesh of my brain.  All of my focus is upon my ache.  I think of hell.  To be immersed in perpetual torment without escape.  Would death hold pause?  Or is it from suffering to suffering.  I ache, I ache, I fall asleep for the last time.

***

A broken heart feels like a lead blanked wrapped around my chest.  It pulls and is heavy.  Every topic, every moment, surrenders to the thoughts, that hurt.  I wish there was medicine for heartache.  Something to push it away, dull it, perhaps erase it.  I try to distract myself, nothing works.  It takes time.  Time for the pain to dissipate.  I didn’t chose this ache, it chose me.  It was like catching a cold.  I was in an infectious place, my emotions were malnourished.  My neglect causes this perpetual ache.  My heart is broken, if it heals, amid stitches and scars, it will never be the same.  It may be smarter and better, but not original, hopeful and pure.   Wounded by black fire, its beats, crooked, puffing chalky smoke.  I am trapped in a hot shower of emotions, and they burn me where I can’t see.  I can’t stand still.  Pain eats away what is left of me.  I make it stop forever.

***

Things don’t go my way, as I sit in a new warm car.  I am mad that my wife picked out the wrong color of winter coat.  I am so hot I have to turn the defrost off.  I look at the temperature reading on my radio.  “Minus twenty?  Wow!”  I would hate to have to work outside in this.  I yell at the coffee shop people, they screwed up again.  I tell wife some drunk homeless dude passed out in a snow drift.  She is crying  because her best friend died from  severe migraine or something last week, and her husband was so heartbroken he lost her, that he took his own life.

In that moment, I realize,  I have nothing to complain about.  I stopped and thanked God for the many, many, blessings he has given me. I ask him to forgive me for not seeing the other souls and their pain on this earth.  I hug my wife, my hot tears soak her shoulder.  My kids said, “Ewwww daddy!”  My wife and I laugh.

 

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert