Military Poetry

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 20, Who Won?

It’s Day Twenty at NaPo where the prompt challenged me to write a poem that recounts a historical event.

Who Won?

Some people think we,
the USA,
won every battle during
the war in Viet Nam.

When attrition
and body count mean more
than maneuver and tactic,

When pawns are used as bait,
it’s chess, not real life.
Has the Army ever
told the truth
at the first chance given?

Classmate Tom, only 20 when drafted
and forced to war
died in the battle Xa Cam My,
near Saigon, Viet Nam,
on the 11th day of April 1966.

In-country only three weeks,
along with nearly 40 of his mates,
many others butchered and maimed
for life—they now can barely tell the story.

Was it the short artillery fire,
the cleverness of the Vietcong,
the foolishness of the USA officers?

Attack after attack by the VC brought more
American blood to earth and more death, until—
not so mercifully, Charley decided
to move on and to fight another day.

Nine years later Saigon fell
and Viet Nam became
one country and America’s
government found other things
to lie about.

Like in 1966 when Private Tom
and 35 virtual strangers died
in a forbidden foreign place
fighting for his Purple Heart
and Combat Infantry Badge.

Twenty years—where did they go?
Twenty years, and for what?
The tag on my shirt says
“Made in the Socialist
Republic of Viet Nam.”

Look both ways and wonder, will it ever be over?
Ignore the gaps at your own peril
so you can go back home in a metal box and declare victory,
or at least the promised “honorable peace.”

Note: While the reference in the poem to 20 years is the full duration of the US involvement in the Viet Nam conflict, it is also the age of my classmate when he was killed. The Battle of Xa Cam My was 58 years ago.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 16, My Bufferina

Today’s prompt is a revenant from 2016. I was to describe an object or place in a poem that ends with an abstract line.

My Bufferina

In the lower-deck belly
of the B-fifty-two-dee bomber,
two downward shooting ejection seats,
held two-thousand hours
of my youthful ass.

Whatever was bad outside—was worse inside,
oven hot in summers;
meat-locker,
freezing-cold in winters.
All jets, or airplanes, had the same putrid odor:
burned wire insulation, fried electronics, old dry puke,
and piss. Add oil and JP-4 jet fuel.
No shit!

Navigation and bombing, our job, done there.
Twelve-to-twenty-four-hour missions
(mixed with moments of stark terror);
we worked, wrote, drew, set-and-checked,
and double-checked;
we ate our meals sitting there,
sometimes
one napped during deadhead times,
a home where liquid oxygen was life,
and the noise—
literally deafening.

Service ceiling nine miles up,
nuclear
low-level missions
dodging hills, towers, cows,
and Nebraska farmers’ turkeys;
sweat and stink;
then, after debriefing,
it was beer-thirty time.

Happy Days was a great TV show.

Look both ways because perspective is everything.
Mind the gaps on the maps from when GPS was a dream
called, “what do you need me for, now?”

 

Sammi’s Weekender #348 (turmoil)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and more 53-word writings.

The Young Die in War

Into the turmoil of war, he went.
That young man in love with a dream,
showing his loyalty and patriotism,
what he can do for his country,
his tribe, his people, his gods.

Willingly, eagerly,
into the hazy war he went,
returning home bagged as meat and bone,
into the war he went.

Look both ways in school but keep asking, keep your mind aware,
why are we… why do we?
Mind the gaps in the destruction and rubble and remember why.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #336 (search)

Ease your search for Sammi’s page and more excellent 52, pickup pieces by clicking on this graphic.

The Maelstrom of Combat

Hunt and kill missions,
search and destroy—S&D,
sick and disgusting.

If it’s them and dead, it’s VC.
Body counts win wars.
Ask GM-azon.
Euphemistic defense profits for all,
but not the warrior, the solder,
dead and maimed
they suffer, kid-killers—all,
they hate and love battle.

Combat. Killing.
I die. Why?

Look both ways, toward the light and the dark.
Mind the gaps for hints of denial.
It is yours to reason why.

Sammi’s Weekender #333 (Whisper)

Click on graphic for Sammi’s page and more writings.

The soldier whispered
into the radio,

we’re surrounded.
need help, now.
target on my coords.

She heard the shell
coming,
but not the explosion.

Look both ways in combat. Mind the gaps, but war is war.
Take many of them with you when you go.

 

Capt. Nargis Kabiri, commander of Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division Artillery. She is the first female field artillery commander for the 3rd Infantry Division (US Army).

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 14)

Dear Bill,

Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous, favorite, or unfavorite, poem of the past.

Happy writing! And regards,

Maureen

PS: Don’t forget, Yolonda’s birthday is in exactly two weeks.

I love Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. However, I decided to use it for my ridiculous (or maybe not) parody.

Say What?

Half a league is still
over a mile and a half—
The Valley of what?
Did you say death?
Now hold on there, Cowboy.
Right, we got six hundred.
The rooskies got way more.

Blyme, Sir. Did I hear right?
Charge their cannons
with our lancers?
Another Army SNAFU.
I need to explain something.
I don’t give a rat’s ass why.
We’re all going to feckin’ die.
Not in this man’s life,
not even with six hundred.

All of them artys on three sides,
no cover, no air support, and
whose idea was it
to bring our knives to
this crazy cannon gun fight?
Me and this horse will
just mosey yonder and wait.

What the hell is wrong
with you, Captain? I say
we let them Cossacks
and Rooskies be. They mean
no harm to me.

Oh, shit! Now look what
you did—another “oopsie”
by our genius leadership.
There has been some ugly
stuff out here. We’re not
six hundred no more.

I heard you say that
glorious death awaits me.
Maybe so. But I prefer
don’t be stupid and live
to fight another day.
“Noble six hundred” my ass.

Look both ways, but knives are no help in a gun fight.
Mind the gaps and pass the ammunition.

To learn more about the history of this event, click here.

To read and hear read Tennyson’s poem, click here.

 

*Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

Sammi’s Weekender #275 (avian)

Click the graphic to fly to Sammi’s blog page to submit and to read other’s prose or poems.

Got My Six

His name was Jay.
We called him Jay Bird
due to his avian-like
looks and behavior.
Callsigns were
seldom complimentary,
like Maverick or Viper.
Jay Bird was my friend.

Look both ways in life but memories are treasures of the mind.
And mind the ever-present gaps as you connect the dots and wonder why.

Monday’s Rune: Hurry & Wait

Call Alice or Jody Call

Hurry up! and then wait
might be a cliché to some.
Army’s GI Joes claim it
as their own,
but we’ve all been rushed
and rushed, hurried along,
forced into quick-step like
anthropomorphic white rabbits
through Alice’s wonderland story
(not Arlo’s restaurant one)
and Grace’s slick psyche-song.

Rushed to somewhere
only there to wait,
and wait some more,
and then wait longer.
(‘twas no rarity, either.)
On top of that,
just like the mad hat,
they’d (we) add five minutes,
early
plus five,
and then five more,
(if not ten) minutes early.
A military obsession
greater than want of
any weapon
or crazy-ass war.

Embrace the suck
if it makes it
better how ya feel,
about it all,
been there,
done that,
was not late,
but had to wait.
We’ll all be early
for our own
funerals, unless
it’s Oxford
(not Tulsa) time,
when late is just fine.

Look both ways if you’ve had “some kind of mushroom.”
Mind the gaps and “remember what the dormouse said, feed your head.”

 

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 26)

Click the NaPo button above to open today’s prompt page with links to more poems.

For my twenty-sixth daily, prompted, voluntary assignment, today I was challenged to write a poem that contains at least one epic simile. These (Homeric) similes extend and develop over multiple lines with decorative elements that emphasize the dramatic nature of the subject. As suggested, I chose to write a complete poem as one long epic simile theme (salted with some metaphor) to carry the poem.

Flying Like Dragons

Like unleashed frightening awesomeness,
like giant thundering flying dragons with
massive wings lifting us skyward, roaring, breathing fire;
my brain blends with this pestilent machine, as if I’m guiding
an iron plague with deafening noise to wreak death,
to pour vengeance down upon their wrongs, a bane
to my enemies, a scourge of fire-for-fire. Flying
at invisible heights, with a sharp stinging tail, breathing
radiation into electrons, as my stealthy flying monster
seeks annihilation of the unjust.

Like a beast, it sees over great distances,
it smells its enemies in total darkness; then skillfully, silently
we approach as offensive defenders with hidden talons;
without emotion or fear, as if by kismet we destroy our prey
with automatic, irreversible, unmerciful curses.

Look both ways to see what is nearby but accept the limits of sensory perception.
Mind the gaps and trust your dragon’s instruments.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 20)

Click this pic for to open the prompt page and links to other poems.

At the two-thirds complete NaPoWriMo Wednesday, my assignment, should I choose to accept it, was to humanize (anthropomorphize) a food.

Ask any front-line (combat) Army or Marine Corps Viet Nam War veteran about C-rations, especially about this one.

Voldemort Chow

It is not an acquired taste
c-rats (thankfully) are nevermore.

But he who must not be named,
you-know-who—of Hogwarts,
the Dark Lord of chow, bitter
Lord Voldemort of field rations
universally despised for bad taste.

In the boonies, in another world:
The Nam! What was in that can?
Bad luck shall befall if you say it—
Ham and Lima Beans, say it
like a soldier: ham and motherfuckers
hated by virtually everyone,
thrown back like VC returning fire
by starving children: numba ten, GI!

International agreement at last.
The most disgusting (real) food ever.
(You gunna eat that?)

Look both ways and tell it like it was.
Mind the gaps when everything sucks.

A video of this food, if you are curious.