Paul Thompson

I don't know much about this Vietnam vet -- he's a brand new friend on Facebook. What I've read here is what I know about him, but he's nice, he's a vet, and he served -- that's good enough for me.  He's earned my respect. Welcome Home, Paul Thompson ... thank you.

("tough enough to wear pink and then some ...")

COWBOY
by Paul Thompson

The old cowboy sits in the far back of the room listening to the gal with the big Gibson singing Patsy Cline. He's thinking about his days as a teenage Recon Marine in the jungles in Viet Nam, life was cheap there and he took so many, about his year in solitary as a POW in Cambodia and two more lives that gave him escape, about his return to the VA hospital and the country he served where he became an outcast for his answer to a call to duty, about all the loving hearts that he broke because he yet knew no better and could then give no more ...

The cowboy’s gone, his whisky's neat untouched, sits alone at his table thinking, listening, “I walk for miles along the highway, well, that’s just my way of saying, I love you” ...
just a beat-up old cowboy that does a bit of project management and writes poems and short stories, mostly western.

I teach from time to time -- U S Naval Academy, UNM-Los Alamos, Oxford, CO Tech U. I'm just "that guy in the three-piece suits and pointy-toed boots", and alone in this life -- can't seem to find a quality cowgirl that will have me.

PJT


“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale