Writings
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The Man-of-War
Oh, how I admire the Man-of-War, as he soars above the sea. The epitome of all the things, that in life, I wished to be.
A thousand foot above the waves, he glides on gusts of air. He has never known a worry, never had a care.
So focused on his mission, unfaltering on his quest; of all the birds that soar the sea, I love this one the best.
Like me, he fishes daily, from sun rise to sun set. But pound for pound he catches more and cherishes all I bet.
He fishes not for vanity, or prizes given out; and when he nets a trophy catch, there are no cheers, none to cry out.
He fishes for his sanity, his food, his way of life, slow, soft concentric circles, with eyes sharper than a knife.
Just fish on the agenda, fine fresh fat fish for feeling fed. He'll gorge his gullet full of fish or else he will be dead.
And when he spies his fleeting prey, he dives into the waves. At speeds to break the mortal neck, he sends fish to their graves.
He's led me to some trophy fish, great mahi, tuna, kings. I slowly cruise beneath his flight, in the shadow of his jagged wings.
He shares his gift for finding food, with all who simply ask. It’s just his way, it is no job, no labor, toil or task.
"They're Here," he cries, with birdlike screams, no cost, no fee at all. Oh God, just like that mighty bird, let my spirit soar that tall.
I cried because my shoes were old and tattered, worn, then I saw a child with no legs had been born.
Frank Mozeleski
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"I cried"
I moaned because my clothes were faded and old .......when is spied a homeless man crawl from his shrubbery bed and heard the tales his rags told.
I cried because my shoes were old and tattered, worn, then I saw a child with no legs had been born.
I whined because my house was old and small and gray, when I glanced a homeless girl, living in the church doorway.
I whimpered because my job lacked fulfillment and attraction. When I saw the crack whore hit by the taxicab, killed in action.
I prayed because my life missed love and understanding. As I beheld the badly bruised boy beaten by daddy, so
demanding.
demanding.
I begged for a wife whose joy I could share. As I watched the crackhead suck his pipe of despair.
My life was a series of cries, begs and wishes. As others used trash cans and dumpsters as dishes.
Now I turn my face to the bright warm Son. And my cares are for others, anyone.
Frank Mozeleski
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Faces
You won't find love on the Internet, in a chat room, or on the phone.
IM's won't keep you safe and warm, when it's cold and you're alone.
You won't find love at the Opera, in a movie, or a book.
You'll find love in the smiling eyes of the faces in which you look.
Frank Mozeleski
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NATE THE GREAT - A letter to my dead father about the grandson he never met
Mr. John Stanley Mozeleski
Deceased Fathers Department
Heaven Central, Heaven 00000
Dear Father,
Hello Dad, I will dispense with the usual formalities, how are you, what are you doing, etc. they seem like such trivial questions to ask a man in heaven. I know it has been quite some time since we last spoke, I think about eighteen years.
You really looked great at the funeral, Aunt Helen picked out a dashing blue double-breasted suit and a wonderful tie. I'm sure your quite tired of the compliments on the tie by now. The casket was very beautiful, a solid copper body with massive brass handles and lovely cast bronze depictions of the Last Supper between each handle. The funeral and memorial services were splendid, once again Aunt Helen spared no expense in her fond farewell to her beloved brother. There was a memorial service first at the Roman Catholic Church followed by a second memorial service at Polish National Catholic Church. Then on to Miami Memorial Gardens Cemetery on Lejune Road, so coincidental, directly across the street from the Lejune Country Club where you would take me golfing in the summers of my teenage years. It made me think that you must certainly feel comfortable, resting peacefully for eternity within sight of that great dogleg left, par five, fourteenth hole you loved so much.
There was quite a long procession, you would have been embarrassed by the number of people that came. All of your friends from Miami, Cuba and Massachusetts came and paid their respects. There were two stretch limousines for the immediate family. Cindy, Ted and I had our own Limousine, while Aunt Helen, Mary and Bob rode in the limousine behind the hearse. Following the internment, there was a fine Polish wake at the Polish Nation Catholic Church that lasted well into the night. Everyone sang and danced and drank and ate and told great stories of your kindness and your generosity.
The following day the wake continued at Aunt Helen's house, first a large banquet style breakfast then a constant flow of friends and neighbors and business associates, all paying their respects to Aunt Helen and the family. There were four beautiful erotic dancers, from Aunt Helen's Nightclub on Miami Beach, that attended the services and the wakes. I think they were there to show support for Aunt Helen, but I enjoyed thinking they were there for you. They were all tall and slender, wore long silky evening gowns and spike heels, too much make-up and too much jewelry. I could not help but notice the lovely contrast they cast with the humble little church, and the short old Polish people who ate and danced and sang Polish songs.
All in all, it had to be the finest funeral anyone ever had, the kind of funeral that makes being dead almost worthwhile. The family here is fine, my second wife Cindy is very nice, you would have liked her even more than you did Janie. I have three children and seven beautiful grandchildren. I wish you had been around long enough to meet them all. They all send their very best, Nathan asked that you say "Hi" to Jesus for him.
That is why I am really writing Father, to tell you about Nathan, and how having a dad around makes all of the difference in the world. Now that Nathan is the same age I was when I first met you, I can really see how different he is than I was. More importantly I see how much better he will be than I ever could. My purpose is not to make you feel guilty or try and beat you up over not being a great father, it is only to tell you what a difference being there makes for a kid. The only memories I have of you from my childhood are when you would come to town and take me on those long shopping adventures. I would get new clothes and toys and bikes and baseball gloves; all the things you thought I would need for the coming year or two. What you did not know was that when I got home, I would give most of the non-clothes items to my older brothers, Monty and Lloyd. I may have had a dad one week per year, but they did not even have that. Their fathers had never even taken the time to contact them at all. While I felt bad about my relationship with you, I felt even worse for them.
Even while I tried to buy off their jealousy and resentment with the toys and sports stuff that you bought me, they continued to be distant. Mother tried as hard as she could to raise us, but the trying meant working two jobs and never being home. The harder she tried, the more we missed her. As she attempted to work, raise her three boys and still enjoy some social life, there was just not enough time. And in the end, the three boys spent their time alone, fending for themselves. Lloyd and Monty may not have been the greatest male role models, but they were all I had. Lloyd was always kind and never mean, and often a very good brother, but he was always busy trying to get by himself. He never wavered, he never strayed, he never gave up. Now Lloyd is a very successful doctor in North Carolina, he even owns his own clinic and has four beautiful children. Lloyd was the closest thing I ever had to a dad, and I love him so very much for that. We see each other every Christmas when Lloyd brings his family to Florida to visit his wife's parents.
Monty on the other hand, terrorized me from first moments I could remember. Monty would beat me up, steal my
things and generally intimidate me at all times. If I ever told my mother, then I was sure to get it a lot worse later.
Monty jumped from one foster home to another, then graduated to juvenile programs and finally to real adult jail. He was like a strange post graduate student in the college of drug use and petty crime. Monty never committed any violent crimes, he saves his violence for his own family, to the rest of the world he was just a thief and a drug addict. Monty shared our mother's propensity for marriage and was married several times between his various incarcerations. Every time, he managed to destroy the lives of those who loved him, his wife, his children, his family with his drug use and constant violence against them. Now Monty resides in prison, a victim of the habitual criminal statutes.
The presence of a Father, in a young man's life, has so many different benefits. As I look at my life after forty-two years, I clearly see the problems that I experienced because I never had you in my life. I never saw you love my mother, so I have a hard time loving. I never saw you respect a woman, so I have had trouble respecting them. I never saw you plan for the future, so I have had no great plan. Most of all, I never saw you love me, and that is why I am so devoted to Nathan. He will never know the pain I felt when I saw other kids with their dads, or the raw emptiness that consumed me while I sat at home and missed little league because there was no one to take me.
Nathan has a full time Dad with a part time job in the real world. You would love Nate, Dad, he is the little boy that you wanted me to be. Nate is very bright yet humble, his teachers tell me that he never boasts, even though he has so many talents. Nate has his own wheels and is a very responsible driver, he has his own golf clubs and a wonderful fifty-yard drive. Nate is in his fifth season of Little League and plays second base for the AA League "T&T" Twisters and is unquestionably the best second bagger in the AA league. Nate is a card-carrying member of both Ducks Unlimited and The National Rifle Association of America, he has his own gun collection and is a great young hunter with eight professionally guided hunting trips to his credit. Our time in the woods has been the very best of times, and he will tell you that it is his favorite times.
It is there that we bond as father and son, as friends and companions. We named him Nathan because that means "Gift from God" and that is a polite way of saying that Nate was a bit of a surprise. But he has more than lived up to his name. Had Nathan not come along, I may never have realized what I missed in our relationship. How important the Father and Son interaction really is. I won't take any credit for the wonderful way that Nate has turned out, only to say that I was there with him, that I spent time with him, that he never felt alone. Perhaps all a boy really needs is the unspoken encouragement of a father's presence, the silent look of pride when a son does something well, the ultimate non-verbal expression of love, known as "taking the time" to be there.
I have fixed the broken the chain of fatherhood in our family lineage. The chain that you broke, the chain with the severed link between you and me. Your father was there for you, I remember Grandpa Stanley as a very young boy. He would row me across the lake to his cabin for lunch on soft summer afternoons. I often wished I spoke Polish or he spoke a little English. I would have loved to hear stories of you as a child. But we never spoke, we just used sign language and seemed to understand each other well enough. I knew that he was there for you Dad, and you were a better man for that. Nate will grow up to be a fine man, who will know love because he was loved, he will be confident due to his own success, he will know compassion from the patience shown to him. I am quite sure that Nate will carry these qualities into his own adulthood and family. Nathan will share these values with his own son, who in turn will pass them on to his. I pray that the chain of Fatherhood in our Family Lineage will remain unbroken from this point forward.
All My Love, Your Son,
Frank
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Who Really Died? - A Soldier's fight for life on the battlefield
by
Frank Mozeleski
It was dark when they loaded the up on the choppers, the only light was the faint blue runway illumination fixtures that skirted their pathway toward the gunships, large black silhouettes, loud and frightening, their long slender blades swirled the hot, damp jungle air down into their faces as they approached, it always seemed strange, so damn hot, even before down.
0545, Shit, he thought, they were already late, late boarding, late getting off, and in-country that was bad, really bad. Every second that ticked by behind schedule was equal to one percentage point against your chances of surviving the trip. The distance to the LZ was timed to the minute, get there too soon and you stumble around in the friggin' dark kicking land mines and tripping over Charlie as he sets up, get there after dawn and Charlie is set up.... he takes you off every other one, the greenies, the grunts, the crazies, the vets, whatever order you jump, he takes every other one. The guys joked that because most of the gooks used old Russian bolts actions, it took that long to chamber the next round. Whatever the reason, Frank hated to be late to the LZ, hell he hated the Landing Zone itself, he hated it as if it were an entity... he hated the LZ most of all.
The whole incredibly stupid exercise of landing, finding, killing, running and loading back up ... known as "patrol"... it all started at the LZ. He had seen more friends go down at the LZ than any other single place in country, so many friends, so many fine young mother’s sons from anywhere, USA, turned into dust right there at the LZ. He thought about them for a moment, he rarely allowed himself to think back about them. Those fine young soldier boys, instantly transformed into memories and shiny little brass engraved nameplates, on highly varnished wood plaques, in the lobby of God Please Send Me Home Baptist Church. He missed them and felt guilty about his "better them than me" attitude.
He thought about how some pretty little local girl might pass by and gently touch the shiny name plate of some past lover or hometown football hero, immortalized in brass by Gen. Westmoreland and President Johnson and Ho Chi Mien. That's where he belonged, only his greatest past deeds ever recounted, only his short young life's triumphs remembered. He really did not live long enough to disappoint anyone, to do anything really stupid, to ruin a marriage, raise a child poorly, run a business into the ground, to just fail in general. So, by virtue of his short, relatively clean life and the truly heroic means of early demise, he is granted immortality on the hometown church plaque, on a wall in some little town in anywhere. Frank snickered to himself.........” good for him. not for me.”
He did not know God when he got in-country, and then after a few months he met him, they talked, they shared a few beers, they argued, they disappointed each other and ultimately both decided not to believe in the other. Now they existed in two separate planes, two unconnected realities, and he felt both were the better off.
The gunships lurched up and pitched forward in that unique way that only helicopters can, they roared up and off the tarmac like a flock of giant mechanical geese loud and strong and confident, heading north by northwest 40 clicks, hill #1122, he had not told anyone at the briefing that his birthday was November 22, it would have seems stupid at the time, now its seemed scary, eerily prophetic. He would not think of it again, there was no destiny, no divine plan, only action and reaction, each step of our lives forged second by second with every decision or indecision. Coincidence, okay maybe, only that. To believe in anything else would shatter his reality, cause him to open wounds that had taken forever to heal. Force him to try and reestablish his acquaintanceship with God. Hill #1122 was just another hill; it meant no more to him than to any other GI on the chopper. Just another worthless piece of Asian real estate that Uncle Sam would gladly purchase for a price of fifteen or twenty dead soldiers, only to be a short-term rental property.
He gazed around the loaded cargo bay, every man in the squad seemed to handle the ride to the LZ a little differently, he watched the greenies scared stiff not knowing what to expect when they hit and knew that they were lucky for their ignorance. He watched the grunts, greenies that made it through a couple patrols, they pumped themselves full of artificial courage and fake valor with high fives and cheap army cliques like "Death from Above" Kill em all, let God Sort em Out" and "Semper Fi", each followed by a obviously nervous hand slap above their heads. They needed that bonding, that shared courage that only facing death together can generate. Without it they would stumble out of the chopper and wander around aimlessly until they were cut in half by Charlie. The grunts handled the ride better than anyone else, in fact they actually enjoyed it.
It was the crazies that bothered Frank, they were weird and kept to themselves, they had grown fond of killing and death and agony. They looked forward to each new LZ as an opportunity, another chance to kill whatever crossed their path, their glazed eyes transfixed upon the open cargo bay door, anxiously awaiting their release. They considered themselves the original "Dogs of War", but in reality, they were just bullies, bullies with high powered weapons and no sense of responsibility, no conscience, no feelings, no compassion. They wandered the battlefield exacting the most cruel and sadistic justice against those most innocent of any wrongs which they perceived to have been done upon them. They doled out supreme punishment to these ignorant savages, people who defecated on the ground and bore their children swatting over baskets. Savages, innocent, unevolved, undeveloped, he pitied them for their circumstance while hating them for their vulnerability.
They had always been pawns, since the days of feudal lords and samurai, the skinny little village people had always been victimized. But never in history had they known the sheer terror, the agonizing torture of being pawns in this global chess game. When General Westmoreland and Ho Chi Mein play chess, the very sky rains fire and death and destruction. With each knight’s advance, a thousand villagers are displaced, with each bishop's block, a hundred village virgins are violated, with each pare and thrust countless thousands lose their balance and fall into chaos. This is what he and God had argued over... the shear injustice of it all, the undeserving agony, the random chance of chaos.
How could God let this exist, especially if he had built this house and furnished it and paid the rent and painted it, why would he let his children destroy it and themselves from within??? God would not answer him when he pleaded for a response to this question, over and again and again, then finally never again. They had never resolved anything, so they stopped talking and slowly learned to hate each other for their own weaknesses. Frank knew that God had sent the crazies, just to remind him of the unsettled argument, .......perhaps that is why they never seemed to die, just get uglier and meaner with each patrol.
Frank sat with LT and the other first sergeant, the vets, risen in rank by death and default, not skill or courage. They just outlasted the idiots who came before them. As the self-appointed angels of agony glided over the black jungle, Frank allowed himself a little time for philosophy. He had always thought that if he died, he wanted to have thought deep thought before he slept. He glanced around the bay, at the boys, at the crazies, at the mindless killing machines that Uncle Sam had so lovingly cultivated.
They were all scared, there was never any doubt about that for a moment...the sweat, the telltale sweat gives you away every time. Fear sweat is different from heat sweat, different as ovaries are to testicles, different as beer is to wine, hot to cold. Fear sweat sticks to you, hangings on the pores, gathers into larger droplets that hang like little round signs yelling "don’t look at me, I am not afraid." Fear sweat has something else in it beside just perspiration, something sticky and nasty and repulsive, I think it’s urine, like the evolutional grandparents the shark, maybe we pass minute traces of urine through our skins mixed with our heat sweat, when we are really, really scared. Who knows, maybe it just feels like urine.
His mindless wandering in self-approved philosophy were interrupted by the crackle of the bay speaker, "T minus 45 sec to jump street, gun crews, lock and load. good day gentlemen, have a nice day at work. Good God Speed" Every face swung towards the bay speaker, each as if expecting to see a TV or a face or something besides a round little box. Each saw nothing.
"Moe" LT yelled, take Bravo company and jump heading 048, one half click, turn 000 flank our right side, got it?
"Shit no! LT, for God’s sake I’m a short timer, Bravo is all greenies, you want to get me killed on my last friggin pat. Give me a friggin break LT, I have pulled your worthless ass out of a dozen jams since Tet alone, and never asked for a God damn thing before, not Bravo.
LT was stressed... maybe the jump, maybe the mission, maybe just how late they were, he came out of his seat like he had been ejected, like James Bond’s unwanted passenger, like a bullet from a gun. Before Frank could move LT had him pinned to the bay wall with his forearm, his blue steel 45 cal. Automatic US Army issue pistol pressed into Franks open mouth, so deep Frank could feel the jagged grip handles brushing his lips.
“Listen Moe, I have put up with you shit only because I trust you, I don’t like you I don't like the way you talk; I don't like the big words you friggin use, I don't like the way you think, I don’t like you breathing my friggin air, you got that? I tolerate you because you won’t be the one who frags my ass from behind, you’re not a crazie, your too damn clean, your too damn good, your too God dam perfect to ever do anything with feeling. Now head 048, one half click, turn 000 and flank my friggin right, you got that, you got that solider, or I’ll take you out right here, right now. Yes now, one jump, one pat, one home haul before you hit the states, understand me Moe??”
"YYEEATT LT”, Frank choked, almost regurgitating from the gun oil and the shock and the slight trickle of urine, dripping down his thigh
The gunships began their rotating landing approach pattern, a rotating target is so much harder to hit. But, when the target is big, big like a Huey, it doesn’t matter. A ten-year-old kid could lace a thousand rounds through it if he only had the right piece. A woman could knock down any one of the birds if she just had a Lars - Guide Point, they lay around the scene of every successful GI ambush, ripe for the taking, like apples freshly fallen from fragile branches. No matter who was out there, the weapon they held made all the difference. Frank peered out of the round bay hatch towards the black jungle.
The thick black quilt of darkness had been replaced by a thinner gray fluffy sheet of dense fog and dawn. Damn it, he thought, we were screwed, really screwed. He knew the war birds were too loud and too visible against the dawn’s orange and gray curtain, perfect target silhouettes, too damn big to miss, too damn big not to see. he knew any minutes the pings would start, the pings you hear as the 223 cal. and 227 cal. Russian rounds penetrate the skin of the war bird. That is why we all sat on our helmets, to keep from having our balls shot right out from under us. To keep the family jewels safe and sound and maybe one day, father a son who sit on his helmet in some desert or in some oil field or some other forgotten place in the future. Before he could finish his thought, he heard the pings, they were under fire, every man, tightened up two notches, even though there was nowhere for them to go, just sit there and depend upon their helmet to protect their manhood.
Before the sound of the second ping could clearly register, they started up, the side gunners with their 60-cal. belt fed, air cooled automatic machine guns, spraying 50 rounds a second indiscriminately across the gray jungle floor, back and forth sending hot lead steel jacketed projectiles, the size of small carrots, hurling towards the earth at three thousand feet per second. Splitting small palm trees as they struck, killing any animal or plant in their path. The roar of the twin 60 caliber guns was deafening as the warbirds sat down on the LZ.
"Let's Go!” cried LT as he hit the door. He was always the first out, some thought that was bravery, I knew it was smart. Charlie always expects the nobodies to come out first, it's part of their heritage, it would be that way if the gooks were in the bird. LT knew the oriental thinking process and used it to keep his ass alive. Frank thought, I will get LT to Florida someday, and when I do, I’m going to kick his ass, probably about three times, maybe four, but at least three times. Frank and the rest of Bravo company, five greenies and one crazie, jumped about half through the load, he had already taken his bearing while in the bird, a trick he learned on jump number five, when the old first sergeant caught a round in the eye while trying to read the compass in the middle of the LZ. Ever since then, Frank had taken his bearings as soon as the bird fully rested on the ground.
They ran, they ran full speed towards the small banana thicket at 048 degrees. If we can get there he thought, we might stay alive until lunch. Bullets rained down around them as they ran zigzag fashion across the LZ. Frank never saw the third nor the last greenie as they lost their races with death across the LZ. He never would know how they died, valiantly? Crying like women, tough like a Spartan? No one has time to ponder the timeless questions when they run for their lives while they soil their garments. Frank knew he was no hero, no John Wayne, no Audie Murphy hell he wasn’t even Barnie Fife, he was just a guy trying hard to pay his bill, paying in full his right to be an American. What choice did he have anyway? Go to Canada, go to Mexico? Join those fools who traded their lives for a "Get Out of War" pass?
They made the banana thicket, thank God, yea God, every now and then he still thanked him, even though they were not actual on speaking terms. As he got his new 000 bearing and picked a point in the distance to chart, he thought for a moment he glanced the simple points of tiny, thatched roof huts, peeking over the far edge of the banana thicket. Jesus, right at 000, I hope it’s not an active village he thought, not on my last jump. They moved quickly towards the prearranged coordinates, keeping the right flank protected for whoever may be still alive with LT. As they reached the end of the banana fields the village was in sight. It was active, civilian gooks were running in every direction, pigs and chickens and kids and old women all caught up in the evacuation frenzy. Everyone was carrying something, even the babies knew to take what little anything they had and flee.
Before he could fully digest the picture a large mortar round hit the rear of the company, then another ahead of them followed by a third to the right, Down! Down! he cried. He looked to the rear of the column, one more greenies and Blade the crazie were spread around the path like jelly over a hot bagel. It was hard to really disseminate who was who. The greenie was a victim, Blade though, he got his reward for fragging first sergeant Cole back during the Tet offensive, for the first time, Frank felt happy to see someone blown apart, happy to see them buy the farm. He wondered if he was becoming a crazie?
It was only three of them now, as they opened up their M-16s in a fan shaped direction, short deliberate bursts, no long fire, save those rounds, it is so much better to shoot Charlie than wrestle him. He motioned for the two greenies to flank left around the huts, they acknowledged and began moving under fire. Frank hoped they understood his hand signs, they were greenies, you never knew what to expect. Frank moved straight up the path to the edge of the thicket and stopped, frozen with fear. He knew a minefield when he saw one, maybe the only real benefit of being a county boy was knowing what planted fields look like. He immediately noticed the lack of natural vegetation on three-foot centers east and west. This was done so that the gooks could either run between the mines or retrieve them later if needed. This was certainly a minefield. He was exploring his options when the next mortar round fell. This one was too close, the shear concussion of the blast threw him violently to the earth, only the soft, thick banana stalks had saved him. They had absorbed the lead fragments.
He lay on the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He remembered the last time he lay on his back and could not get his lungs working, he had been a boy of eight and fallen from his tree house directly on his back. With the wind knocked from him, the little boy of eight lay there, staring at the sky wondering if he would die, or if his lungs would start up automatically and he would survive his brush with death. He would say a little boy prayer and his lungs would always start again. This time he noted the coincidence, halfway around the world, a dozen years later, there he lay, a little boy whose lungs would not start, wondering if he would die. Nothing had changed, except this time he did not pray as the mortar rounds increased around him and the village and the last two greenies, he wondered if they had made it to the huts.
As he struggled to turn over on his stomach and find his weapon, he first saw her. A dirty little gook princess with torn clothing and eyes the size of saucers. She appeared seven or eight, he could never tell with the gooks, but she was too young. She had been born after the aggression started and would die before the Paris peace talks, her whole miserable little life, lived out inside this dirty, nasty war. She ran terrified to and fro between the burning huts and the raining automatic weapons fire. The sand danced around her tiny feet as she ran so drastically frantic that she looked like a miniature ballerina performing a wonderful ballet for a totally ungrateful audience. "Damn it", he thought as he realized that in her hap hazard path, she moved ever directly towards the minefield. She was only 20 meters from the edge of the minefield. He could get to her; he may even live. He could do an Audie Murphy number and grab the little girl and roll into the brush. He could do a John Wayne and just stand up and shoot everybody while he whisked her up in his right arm and smile.
But he would do neither. He started for her, and stopped, started again and took fire from the right forcing him to fall on his face. He looked up and saw her only 10 meters from the minefield and moving towards it. He lurched back and forth as if attached to some great hydraulic machine, tethered by some invisible rope, while his Fear and his Courage battled for control of his soul. He thought, "No, I can’t risk my life for some worthless child who will never survive this war or what follows it, this is my last jump for God’s sake"
His Logic had snuck up behind His Courage and delivered a staggering sucker punch. His Courage, dazed and mortally wounded, made his way to the ropes, hoping in vain for a call from the referee. The call did not come, His Fear finished the job with a powerful palm thrust to the nose bridge, shoving the cartilage deep into His Courage’s brain. His Courage was dead. As Courage died, she reached the mine field, it was too late to help her.
He started to turn away just as she hit the mine. KABOOM.... and it was over, the black cloud of supreme injustice was all that remained of the little village girl. A rising plume of smoke and sand and blood. The little girl had disintegrated. Her poor little spirit scattered to the four corners of the universe; her soul rendered to dust. He rolled onto his back and cried; he cursed his own indecision.
As the hot salty tears streamed over his crow’s feet and trickled down into his ears, he felt as if they flowed right into his heart. As he watched the black plume rise higher into the blue morning sky, he thought about God again, maybe he would try to give him a call when he got back. Ask him to take a net and scoop this little girl as she ascended, reassemble her and hold her close to his chest and give her a moment of peace and love and security. Every living being deserves that at least once, he thought. Especially those who never get it.
It would be years later, after several failed marriages, multiple bankrupt business and a string of drug addictions and lost encounters before he would truly realize what had happened that day. The day His Courage was ambushed by His Fear and His Logic and murdered on the spot. He died too that day, every living piece of him, inside of his epidermal layer was dead, he was just too stubborn or stupid to accept it. He wandered through his remaining years an emotional zombie.
Frank Mozeleski
