Mr. Rory Richards
Lived his life,
Taking garbage
Out at night.
He shovelled drives
He swept walks,
He listened intently
While others talked.
Others talked.

When Rory wasn't
Weeding the garden,
He was outside
Hanging laundry.
Moms were jealous,
Dads were shamed,
But whispering neighbours
Never complained.
Rory's good
At the husband game.
He presented well.
The neighbours continued
To tsk and tsk.

On his way home
From work,
He picked up the kids
From daycare,
He'd find time
To volunteer there.
He'd have treats
At home for them,
And their friends.

He volunteered with
Cubs and Scouts,
Always finding
Extra time
For jamborees
And overnights.

One day the cops
Came on the scene,
Rory wasn't
What he seemed:
His computer
Showed a different man,
A lurking, luring
Child **** fan.
And the neighbours'
Tsks cresendoed.

At his trial
He sat abandoned,
But neighbours there
Gave witness to
A man they thought
They surely knew.
A family man
In his pew.
All his life
He lived beside them,
A man they let
Their kids rely on.

Maybe it started going down Peasley Canyon Road. I can't recall.
****.
Maybe it started with not giving, or not wanting to.
No matter really, that act was over, the lines were out and the curtain drawn.
It's funny what the mind drags up
on it's own.
Mine drags up things like lost telescopes, looked thru
and cracked plastic leather , that hadn't
yet.
I knew how that man on TV felt who had only months to live, as I had only weeks.
Only two.
So...I gave you my blue apres-ski sweater, too big, a ring I still wear, too big to0 and my love, that I suppose wasn't.
On the plane away it was like a mixer gone crazy inside me...part staying, part going.
Of the part that went along I lost or had it removed with drill parades and dope lectures, fighting fires you can't loose and paper targets.
Very surgically.
Letters to you had phrases like 'smashed psyche' (which I still can't spell) and 'never let go'.
Bunk beds can be fun until they're made of steel and draped with woolen blankets and someone's legs from Alabama.
One of my friends at camp turned me on and I became the barracks Dylan, I'm not sure whether Thomas or Bob.
After a hundred years and eleven weeks it ended
and started.
A nice lady at the airport gave us all the only ****** shot we'd e had in eighteen hundred hours.
I'd called, prior to leaving and you were there at the end of that in-and-out mouth that blows the people out and ***** them back in after the fuel
I'd grown tired of walking up that ramp in my dreams but that time, I left no tracks at all.
A blue dress with ruffles round the neck and those patterned nylons then the rage. I read a few days ago that holding hands feels good even in this day and age.
Send that lady a rose.
Two weeks can last 20 minutes, I know.
Then started the back and forth of school a thousand miles away and painful phone call and Conni ,signed with a circle above the i.We split and mended a couple of times and I read the Harrad Experiment and I got a purple note from Conni and I called to say... I'm not sure what.
Hello...goodbye.
Time went by and so did school.
I remember walking across this field in San Francisco and being depressed by how long it took for fifteen minutes to pass when one considered four years.
I flew home to you that weekend and was duly dropped from school the next.
I asked for some dreamed of tug boat in Puget Sound but got instead a minesweeper in Japan. We'de done the front seat and hurried basement tango and I called Conni to say
well, I'm not sure what.
Hello
Goodbye
Stairs and glass and a clutching you and a sick me.

October 10th, Nineteen Sixty Eight
A hand, a car, a reading, a letter, a truck, a plane, a train and another reading.
I think there were only five or six lines to it but it was enough.
No yo-yos, no pick me up and put me down again...ok?
OK, I love you.
A friend named Green, a hundred talks sometimes with wine, sometimes not. Letters and business calls to you, cycles with no keys and McGaha, Clarence BM1, unit of issue one each, houses and no overnights, Lt. Cris Curtis and no-trouble dissension, the Maharishi and July and you and me and you and me
The Astronauts made it and we did too,  by the gate to the new lake
"A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind."
He was almost right.

June 21st Nineteen Seventy
The shrink never seen and you in Southern California at four in the morning and the Kona Hotel.
Burning ears and imagined heavies sent to intercept us at the infamous glass door.Not the first time but the best time.
Flying home together you gave me the window seat and your hand, all I needed.

November 15th  Nineteen Seventy
Sea-tac Motor Inn, coffee and toast and love.
I'm glad you didn't come down cause Ed was there and he was bad enough at saying goodbye.
Calls to you from Hawaii and Kwajaline and Guam and islands no one ever heard of but fish and me.

T minus 180-179-179-177
ad infinitum
Goodbye Subic Bay, goodbye
Tricks to keep away reality like tapes from home and **** in the old man's coffee cup. Jokes told and re-told till we all re-laughed.
Who ever heard of Sea Detail at 3:30 in the morning?
Me, thank God.
Friend Green was gone from Hawaii too, so I left on the first plane. SoCal again as the news media calls it, two days of debriefing then
out
I can't remember if I took a bus or a cab to the airport nor can I really recall which gate or even if you were there.
I guess I start at the tunnel yelling "OUT, I"M OUT!
I don't know if it started going up Peasley Canyon road or down.

Born to do right
Truth my might
Taught to hate evil
To fight it with light

Raised in a santuary
Where no one could see me
An angel hidden from sight
In fear of exposure to the world's delight

Time said hi
And I grew by
The gates were opened
And i could fly

Enthralled by a world
Taught to me, decieving
I roamed everywhere
Without a thought of stopping

I met time by a bench
And he waved again
And now im comfortable
With this world's trend

Im still aware of my values
Heck, its etched into my hippocampus
I know I wont betray
And never will I disobey

As I roamed
I found an abode
Where i felt welcome
In this very mysterious world

I came by every day
And I grew more attached
Some days I stayed
And soon overnights were an always

Ofcourse my teachers knew
Of my new found visiting
To the unknown abode
And didnt let it go

They were scared
Of what I could become
That I would be tainted
That I would no longer be perfect

They kept warning me
At first I understood
And wanted to share
The forseen likelihood

It was reasonable at first
But it started to sour
And their warnings
Started to shower

Soon the shower turned to downpour
And It became out of hand
It had no more logic
And I wanted to leave my land

I ran away
And hid in the world
And again I found that home
Which considered me as their own

I met with friends
That lived in the world
And learned to coexist with them
Learned to appreciate the world

As I grew acquainted
Something grew in my head
A feeling that I have felt before
And has returned once more

Memories of my past return
And this feeling began to churn
I felt heaps of coal burn within my chest
And as I unlock my past regrets

Hatred of my home rekindled
Leaving my sanity bewildered
Thoughts of resovle was constant
But Rage became triumphant

Engulfed in Wrath my decision was clear
To turn away truth was painfully near
Now put my former self aside
And wonder whats like on the other side

Italian Morning.

Naked, shivering by the door,
Cold rainy mist hides the sands,
The stir of restless beaches, old souls ever drifting.  

I feel the warm bed nearby.
Your eyes in sweet surrender.
Where have the overnights taken you.

Love anchors me in Lee shores,
By palm trees at the foot of grace.
I reach our for strength lost in time.

Are these tears in these drops,
Yours, or mine

Mahdi struts the halls on a straight path
His Arab face snugly tucked behind his mask
He is the tech who is a strict adherent of the rules,
Aptly named
Tall and skinny

Not a favorite of the patients, largely unnoticed, works overnights
Won't always give you a snack
But he was a favorite of mine.

Mahdi walks a straight path and I think it is just ... fine!