I was not supposed to remember…

I was not supposed to remember Eskel telling Father about the Israeli atomic bomb in ’60.

Or McCord telling LeMay to keep our DIA cover team out of Dallas in ’63.

I was not supposed to remember the heroin in the bodybags on a C-130,

Or how the CIA flooded Oakland with drugs, simply because people said ‘set us free.’

I was not supposed to remember selling shoulder launch rockets in Kabul,

Or killing 11,000 young Russina draftees in an Afghan tunnel under a hill.

I was not supposed to remember the UN troops in the Congo. It was 1962, and by the end of the day my nine-year-old hands were burned by the Bren-gun I had used in my part of the brutal show.

I was not supposed to remember the taking of life, all the brutal moments of combat with men’s throats under my knife.

But I remember it all. Every face, every cry, every mother’s call.

 

– Mark Richards (c) 2010

 

I Am the Kind of Man Who…

Things have changed so much in my life in the last thirty years, one hardly knows what sort of man stands behind the unseen tears. Once bold, fury-packed youth, replaced now by unrecognized eyes, A voice that once sang rock-n’-roll, silenced now as a nation cries.

All that’s left is the desire to whisper “I love you” to the grandchild as one tenderly helps them change a shoe. Or hold the faithful wife in a slow dance at the Top of the Marc, and watch her sort out a picnic lunch while listening to the meadow lark.

– Mark Richards (c) 2010

Hello world!

Hello friends. I have decided to start this blog mostly to share my husband’s (Mark Richards) writings. Many of you know that he has been incarcerated in the CA state prison system since 1982 for a crime he did not commit. Mark is a talented published writer and has been writing since childhood. He has written books, poetry, short stories, various articles for magazines, and scientific/historical reports for my non-profit. He continues to write on a daily basis. This blog will be an additional avenue to share his voice. In the near future, I plan to publish several of his works as e-books.