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.

Stripey, furry, pollen coated
Buzzing summer stillness into life,
Journey of fertility from stamen to
Stamen, pollination, by-product of travail.
Sweet honey stored in citadel honeycomb
Shaped perfectly, Fibonacci sequence,
Queen factory birthing, supplying an army
Compulsory conscription, signed up for life
Common mind, common goal, calculating
Journeys to fertile meadows, returning
Debriefing to communicate flight path,
Destination situation report, until
One day dispatch signals failure
The hive is silenced, the computer
Turned off.

Staring at the mirror,
not recognizing who i am
Exasperation in my blood
Indignation in my heart

Debriefing myself wouldnt work
Millions of disparate dots
Refuting everything i believed in
Reverencing my thoughts

Living in an inferno of darkness,
Searching for happiness
Trying to be convivial in,
The clutter of melancholy


Nix spirit,mettle,temperament
With fried skull,cold feet
Staring at the mirror,
not recognizing who i am.

The return—
Returning to a home
Folding time and space
To bring back the memory of the day of departure
Arms have extended and grasped all the while
Till today, they take hold of what they reached for
Its familiar contours
Its memory foam
It gives way easily
The meantime has been too kind to its impression
Unkind to its façade
The chaos theory proven true
In their minute variation

The fanfare plays, too often flat
The welcome feast is stale at that
Debriefing passes, inauspicious
The silent distance surreptitious
Replacements ready, set in place
Just one last chance to see the face
Of everything that’s left behind
That it might lay to rest in mind

The return.
This is no longer a home
Time can lose itself again.
Space is mercifully cold
Arms now folded at their sides
Never more
Return again.

If you will indulge me, a Story for you:

"Ending"

I’m safely tucked up in bed now. So frail. When I think how fat I used to be. But I’m very, very old. Might even die tonight, in my sleep. Can hear the wind howling outside.
It’s not such a bad place this. The carers look after me well. If I’m lucky they will wheel me into the garden again tomorrow. Hope that wind dies down and the sun shines. Where am I? Can’t recall the name. This Dim Enta thing. So tired now. So tired…
“And wake!”
What? Where am I? On my back! Ceiling. Face! Doctor Sanders!”
“It’s over, Krol, welcome back.”
I remember. Doctor Sanders. I’ve been hypnotised, regressed to a former life. Lived that whole life! And now I’m awake!
Me: “Did I just die there?”
Dr. Sanders: “Yes Krol, in your sleep. Or at least the person you were died in his sleep… But did you get the full life experience this time?”
Me: “Just about, Bob. I can remember back to being about three. My parents, our little dog, a baby sister. Playing with a wooden train or something that you could ride in. But it seems I died in my sleep…”
Bob: “How far back in time was this?”
Me: “I was born mid-twentieth century, not long after the Second World War…”
Bob: “Fascinating. Better get you into Debriefing, before you forget it all.”
Me: “Yeah. It sure was a long life. Lots of history for you. I can’t get over that that was me!”
Bob: “You’ll soon adjust, Krol.”
Me: “That Death thing was scary, Bob. I was afraid of ‘dying’, as they called it, for most of my life. Thank goodness we found a cure.”
Bob: “Yes Krol, things were really rough back then. But come on, let’s get that report of yours done…”

Paul Butters

© PB 13\6\2018.

the little dog’s ears perk
and the tail nub cranks to a fervor
crunching gravel hits my ears moments later
and all of our collective excitement builds –
she walks in a drops purse and backpack by the door
giving quick pats to dusty heads
before looking over
sparkling love shines as our eyes meet
and the realization takes hold
we are but for each other
until tomorrows work day begins –
sharing minutes and debriefing
work clothes have been shed and tossed
making way for sweatpants
or pajama bottoms
who says there are age limits
in footy PJ’s –
**** hits and bad Netflix
**** hits and black ops
**** hits and baths
and bed –
habitual routine takes shape
but when happiness is applied
generously
there is no way
these habits could be negative –

too many bees were busy. the backyard howling with black and yellow now... the sun high in the memory of Blue.
the heat of a day, baking the laughter and fright as we fled.
oh, how the screened doors quickened -
as we hastily retired to our exhaustive
debriefing, like a gaggle of goose.
for if we were geese -
where would be the breaking of
the rule ?

He's not afraid when scenes
When scenes a loud careless branch
Debriefing the holster
Detective with premise to a fit
The breach and broach
Causeways and thoroughfares

An un crushed drink on his counter

Now check
Coming lackin rab
Bye in to bambinas twinkled toes
Ten low and be bolder
Grab fab re dish debut never
Still holding fears off at rent
Holla

The Testa girl said what's the test for?
****** A
Always there when you call

She wanted me different
I just got to where I could know how they lived with her

Genovese's Harps
How she cried Gino
Gaunt faced in my shame
There is wisdom
She waters no wells
Drawing her hairs
In seeds fading blooms
Gino, she has cried after love

That the illegal of it not a poem yet
My feminity
My fluctuation
In morbidly obscene description
Of rights she delayed?

Those the shelter laws of the Vatican
Lady Sicily ain't a budget

Time 8:18 a.m

As elected to Senate
Non preside
Obstruction is time observing Senate
Testimony of leadership is illiterate command of identity language and breach of security
Formal protocol for debriefing advance of intelligence
Financial terrorism acts

Senator Kennedy has the floor in his Senate term

War Room Broadcast
Free Speech literacy requirements

Asm Irwin
Why is the homeless apartments in our county in fraud court to be removed from Senate hearing and converted to profitable runs on the bank while dying poor justice is recorded?

recorded?
#berniesanders #elizabethwarren #cagovernor #asmirwin #repbrownley #tonybiasotti #nytimes #bbcnews #dailymirror #declanwalsh