"3rd One from the end."

Randy Chaplin-January 20,2013

The thing is you see, I can't remember. I
went into the hospital for 4 days, Tuesday
before last, I had a surgical procedure where
I was put under anasthesiolo-stuff and my
left lung was drained of fluid, it's the 2nd
time I have done this, only this time
the Dr. filled the space up with
some globulence they call "talc" and
apparently that will keep me from
filling up for a while. So I'm working
the soreness of having a tube coming
out of my left side for 3 days.
The oncologist says "it will not
sure your lung cancer but it will give
you a modieum of comfort for a while.:
It is 6am I woke up early.
I drift back to the "Moonlight Beach" in
Encinitas CA, I'm sitting down
by the fire ring and I look up and
see "Vinnie, St. Vincent de Paul de Mino?

over

as he begins to play "oh when the
saints go marching in," coming down that
big ole winding path, blowing that
saxaphone. Our dear kind "Vinnie", he found
Ruth "George" yep, she called herself "George?"
They've long since survived a "horrific"
personal tradgedie and set to raising
their daughter. I miss you "Vinnie".
So here we are 2013, amazing! my
step dad gone, my darling mother gone, my
2 half brothers, although whole to be, both
gone. My big brother Phillip gone. I sit in
this cell, November 1, the oncologist told me,
"4 to 6" months, hard to say w/cancer, maybe 10
months. So, here I am with a whole new
perspective on my life. I think of David
Howlett at least 3/4 times a week. I
know some people must contunue to villify
me. Crazy Louie said, I want my 100
bucks; I could wring your neck
like a chicken. Those words burned
me each utterance a knife wound;
so painful, the shame gripped me,
threw me into the bottomless well.
Louie was not the only one, oh "no,"
Tom & Ed, oh yes, I had opened my
heart up to them and Tom refused
to hear my side, so convinced was
he, that I was the wrongdoer, he was
a drug dealer, this apartment, that one, he
was going down anyway, I was a drug
addict he was a drug dealer - ashes, ashes,
all fall down. I miss you two. I
hated what I had become in Escondido.
The drunken piano playwright. The petty
sweeping and mopping 7 days a week,
you should consider yourself "Lucky."
I did, I was so lucky. I slept
on the cold concrete heroin addled
bank robber you. I gave Louie 66-
100 dollar bills. I don't owe you
anything. I am paid in full. I saw
the monster you are, Psychedelic Mystic,
Dear Ron, he told the police I was
sleeping on Louie's floor. The police
told him I was armed and dangerous.
I was armed w/a disposable camera and
a broken heart, and the knowledge that
the only thing to fear is fear itself.
A truth so enoblings, that nothing
could hurt me anymore. When the ones
you hold up to the light as knowing
whats right as doing the righteous
in this life. So proud to call them your
friend, only to discover, they ever
always thought the worst of you. Yep!
If it was stolen, you must of taken it.
The syringe in the bathroom trashbasket,
that had to be mine, of course it was
Randys, it had to be Randys, IT WASN'T
MINE. it was not!
I would go out of the house usually out my 2nd
floor bedroom window, step down on the fuel oil tank,
and jump down to the ground. I would pull the
big fur hood of my giant air force coat up over my
head and go up to the one spotlight in our
little Indiana town, maybe 6 or 700 people.
Snow as big as butterfly wings blurry and flurry.
There is a horse trough up at the crossroads
I would sit there to deep in the early morning
3:00, 4:00 o'clock and dream and sing, and dream,
and I can still feel the pull of those hopes,
that passion, I wanted to be a writer, an actor,
I wanted to sing in musicals and walk
out through the October and kick the piles
of leaves, smell the burning fireplaces, let the
tears flow knowing I already was all of
humanity, and the cold and the tired,
finally claimed me, calmed me and
I sat down on the one porch step
tellin me, this is not your house, until mom
whispered out the front door Randy ain't you cold?
You better go on up to sleep as I slipped past my
beautiful mother whose only breath was to prove
she cared for her family whose days and evening
dinners, I can now call "classic American Fare."
Pull the blankets up over my naked self, window
1/3 of the way open hear the fan blow away all
the other sounds, him complaining, coffee cup and
green sparkly tin ashtray, calling for him already,
plain white glass coffee cup, every single morning of my
school days sittin there where my daddy had already
gone to lift us up and hold us up the whole house
everything out and inside of it, they held it
up together, my Mommy and Daddy, my wildly
normal childhood. I miss my brothers and sisters.
I miss my room, my bed. I love my memories.

M.R. Chaplin
04/10/2012

"For my stepdad,
the man in my life."

Marvin
Randall
Chaplin
5/9/56