Alan Catlin- Two Poems

                                    Never the Same Father Twice

                                    "She has a new baby every

                                    fifteen months whether she

                                    needs one or not, all of 23,

                                    four kids already & another

                                    on the way, says, "A girl's

                                    got to have some company

                                    when her man is away."

                                    indicating that they were

                                    doing hard time in a place

                                    where the only women allowed

                                    were matrons, lawyers &

                                    shrinks, none of whom got

                                    close enough to be touched-

                                    this getting locked up  a kind

                                    of bad habit her men always

                                    seemed to cultivate or else

                                    she just liked them lean &

                                    mean & horny which was

                                    short hand for crazy, oversexed

                                    and living out of desperation

                                    in a fast lane that always seemed

                                    to stop outside her door along

                                    with plain clothes cops, uniformed

                                    officers of the law, process servers,

                                    repo men, eviction notice carriers,

                                    rental furniture repossessors, none

                                    of whom she answers the door for,

                                    telling the kids to lie still and shut

                                    up or else-and they did knowing

                                    full well that her 'or else' worse

                                    that anything they could imagine,

                                    that could be pounding on the soon-

                                    to-be-padlocked front door.

To Hell in a Handbasket

At the recruiting office

they asked him straight out if

he was interested in becoming,

'A Rocket Technician'.

He thought about it for a full

ten seconds, liked the sound

of, 'A Rocket Technician, huh!?

"Sure, sign me up." Learned

Lesson Numero Uno of enlisted

life, Always Inquire what these

things mean before committing

yourself. Found out his job was

loading rockets onto gunships

and once they were secure,

he was to assume his primary

job function as a side-hatch-

gunner, firing support on missions.

Early on he heard the co-pilot take some

incoming, turned to look and caught

a round in the area where his right

eye used to be.  If he hadn't turned

just then, he would have caught that

round square in the temple and have

become a dead rocket technician/

side-gunner.  He went over to Nam

mostly crazy, came back all the way

crazy and a whole lot more. Sd. "My

duty was like going to hell in a hand-

basket" and looking at him now, you

figured, once he reached his destination,

there was no coming back.