-for Robert Walley in paradise-

1.
"Who Put This Here?

I Want an Answer Right Now!

Who Put This On My Desk”?!

It wasn’t me, but I knew who did it

And old Miss Sykes was tenacious

At getting to the bottom of things.

I was told she once tracked-down

A kid who drew a comical penis
Complete with wire-haired scrotum

And the words "Eat Me Raw"

Ballooned over its circumcised head

On the wall over the urinal trough in the boys room.

Her investigation was masterful

And the artist was soon emasculated

Before the entire class.

It wasn’t me.

2.
Death at the Austin Powder Company:

When the heavily bunkered, labor-intensive building
Designated as "Jelly-Stuffer No. 2" exploded,
(The building where finicky nitroglycerine
Is stuffed inside sticks labeled "Dynamite!") 

Rattling the walls of the "Slurry" facility,
(Bunkered half-a-mile from Jelly #2)

Where I worked, in deepest southern Ohio

Mixing Nitro-Carbo-Nitrate for the coal mines 

Of Kentucky and West Virginia, the team of assembled

Forensic investigators mapped the stages leading to the event

Starting at the farthest evidence found on site,
Far beyond where Jelly #2 was once located,

Then backtracking inward toward the crater's center

In order to determine the initial point of detonation.

Investigator #1 

"This here shoe belonged to Tom Johnson.

Tom was working the big Jelly-Stuffer

At the time of the explosion, so the shoe,

With half of Tom’s leg attached, well, it should be

Way the hell over yonder, but it’s way the hell over here.

That means it travelled like this from the "Stuffer",

Then curved that-a-way, then up in that direction like that,

Was pushed by sympathetic explosion shockwaves in that direction, yonder

And landed all the way the hell out here".

Investigator #2

"Watch your step, fellas. This here is Leo Fenstablaugh’s thumb.

Leo was Q.C.ing the dynamite crimper casings

At the time of the shot, so his thumb should be

Way the hell over there, but it’s way the hell over here.

Now that means there was one initial shot followed by
Four separate sympathetic explosions because..."

3.
Well, anyway, old Miss Sykes was like that,—

A forensic determinator and I knew she’d get

To the bottom of the dirty-little mystery laid upon her desk.

It wasn’t me but I knew who did it,—

And I knew she knew that I knew who did it.

To this day that grade school experience

May be the foundation of an occasional

Tinge of paranoia on my part.— But

You know, sometimes they actually are out to get me.

But the perpetrator behind the caper

In Miss Sykes' classroom wasn’t me.

I’m just the rat-fink who knew who did it.

                                   from the Wellston notebooks and 

                                   the archives of the Hugo A. Dubuque School