Change
by B J James
Jason runs swiftly ahead of the multitude; he does not look back. 
His eyes sight the bottom of the long incline. And he knows what to expect, that the next few hundred or so yards are crucial, and there is the feeling he needs more than just his physical abilities to take this incline, to play this incline, so that he does not fall back with the multitude.
And hishead spins, spinning and thinking and running, then plays the first line:”I wasborn by the river in a little tent,” more than play, more than a line, it isanthem been with Jason throughout his life. These first bars slowing his pace, moderating his stride, Jasonimagining himself a river gently running yet swiftly moving.
A river merging with Jason’s running heart, “and just like the river I’ve been running ever since, its been a long time comin' . . .”
And for this man, in a comparatively short while, he has come a long distance beyond a burden which legs cannot carry a man.
A man come from life roiling, boiling, like rapids crashing along instead of smoothly running life’s highways.
Jason running along the incline his feet striking and striking and striking on the incline on which his legs are striding to assist in conquering a wide swath of demonic past.
What he is doing now is going with the river of his changing. Moving on the inclined plane realizing how the laws of gravity lay down more of a physical impediment on the body flowing within the law when Jason had no use for laws.
It was a lawless life in which this man had been a roller coaster on a constant downhill slide.
Out of control in high school setting off mayhem with a Cherry Bomb thrown amidst the student body in the Social Hall fronting the administrative office.
The door opens. He threw another, went on the run, and grabbed by the shoulder, he whirled and fisted the face attached to that hand.
On the inclined plane with open, fluid, hands the right reflexively balls into a fist. The same adrenaline he felt years ago kicks up the pace; he thinks of his quest.
He knows hemust stay on top to reach the crest, one more long sought after quest. Not one of those short games so prevalent inhis past.
No short games in his body tall and cut like a Greek statue. It is a body sleek and shimmering with sweat. If he had more hair he could see himself a black panther fast seeking prey just how Jason was when he had run the streets.
Like some ectoplasmic man stealing, robbing, assaulting, dealing dope. Hard to catch on camera in full stride, in his present incarnation, a blur if shutter speed is too slow to catch him running hare-like as if just ahead of a fox.
Jason had been no fox. He had been like a wolf-dog vicious, snarling, biting into one pulling a knife in a fight resembling vicious canines.
He had snatched the knife, plunged it deep, twisting it in the man’s gut, before taking off like a sprinter out of the blocks upon hearing wailing sirens.
Now Jason listens closer to the anthem--‘A Change is gonna come,’ as his gait, his pace, his breathing, sing loudly in his ear, where when he was running wild he heard nothing but the howling rush of blood lust.
Lust in bed driving him like an animal coming, rising, preparing her and him a cocaine shot producing bells and bells; pealing bells!
“Suck me!” Jason howled, as Jimmy Hendrix’s `Purple Haze’ plays like a backdrop for Jason’s demons that been running much too fast and faster.
This running now not running him ragged as the change in him is focused on negotiating the incline, measuring his stride, his long legs like pistons up and down and up.
Legs that do not over reach, do not greedily lust, do not violently thrust, running like rivers that do not run upstream.
But Jason’s river runs upstream; Jason running against his wild stream. Jason running against blood when they had robbed the dope house and came out on the run just ahead of lead seeking errant flesh.
Now, in running upstream, he is straightening his stream.
Reaching the crest, the apex, momentarily, he feels triumphant, yet he knows he still has a distance to go much beyond the horizon.
Jason running smack dead into a horizon that finished his running wild, because his heart lay down, for a few moments, on his running fast behind.
Not his first brush with the reaper as he recalls running up the steep brush laden hill in `Nam death pursuing and they had made quick to reach the crest keeping death at a distance.
In his running the road on this day he is running for life. A man who is now running in spite of the mayhem, the blood that had been crashing through his veins, his life on the rocks, keeping death at bay for a while longer.
Increasing his speed he is headed for the now, the present, because as Sam Cooke wrote, “I’m afraid to die cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky, its been a long time coming But I know a change is gonna come”; Jason running for change with eyes steady forward on an ever receding horizon.
