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?”
As if I was Dear old Pablo, Keats, Shelly, or Sharon Olds, I’m to write an ode celebrating some everyday object. We have arrived at Day Nine of the annual challenge of writing 30 poems in 30 days (in April). I try to compose to the tune of Maureen Thorson’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) prompts.
I looked it up. An ode is a lyric poem usually marked by exaltation of feeling and style, varying length of line, and complexity of stanza forms. Generally, odes show respect for or celebrate the worth of something. I picked shoes for this poem and have likewise paid homage to my shoes (click to read it) in the past.
Ode to Shoes
I don’t recall them all,
My shoes and theirs,
the big and the small.
I poemed about one
old faithful pair,
but every day
my shoes are there.
In childhood,
ones for church
and everyday ones.
I have 12 pairs now,
that’s few
compared to some
like the dictator’s wife,
famous for so many
(and little else).
Special ones:
combat or flight boots, hiking, walking,
running; and those god damn shiny Corfam oxfords,
or polished patent leather (or high-gloss plastic for my laziness);
house shoes, golf, football (cleats),
leather, and motorcycle boots,
protective shoes
and fashion footwear, too.
Sandals, flipflops, mules, and
post pedicure odd—one-time use flipflop-ish-es with toe spreaders,
sexy stilettoes
and smelly LGBTQ+ or not
Birkenstocks,
fetish shoes bring pleasure,
while golden shoes
promise treasure.
Wingtips for boomers,
granny shoes for nuns,
shoeless folks: singers,
runners (marathoners),
dancers, poets, cave men and women,
shoeless Joe Jackson,
and shoes that made the rich richer.
Glass shoes with fairy tales,
magic shoes, and you will run faster, promised shoes.
Corrective shoes and recovery
or protective boots and shoes,
so many!—too many kinds
and types and styles and purposes,
but all shoes for us to use.
I’m wearing shoes, slippers to some,
and I am wondering if we the people
have more shoes than any other
article of clothing (I don’t),
but why the hell not?
The wonderful, useful, purposeful,
functional, beautiful, sexy, ugly, everything—
there may not be such a thing
as the ordinary everyday shoe anymore.
Look both ways and wear good shoes
(whatever they are, appropriate mukluks, perhaps).
Mind the gaps because even cliff climbers have their own (bicyclists do too) special kind of shoe.
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.
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.
When he emotionally told me—
he confessed, he squirmed—
with the guilt and shame
that had long lived in his gut.
For him,
it was a hard story to tell.
Surrendering emotions,
“If evil were evil enough;
if good were good enough.
“I would find the courage.
I would fight for right,
one war to end war—forever!”
He was conscripted. Drafted!
It was what he could do
for his country. To serve. To kill
(or be killed).
Maybe he’d find glory. Heroism.
Maybe death.
But wait.
He opposed this war.
He was to fight and kill
but he hated this war.
“Is there another war
more to my liking?”
He felt that killing and dying
were not in his peacenik milk nor
cup of tea.
“Send another,” he protested.
He was ordered to report.
But he was too good for this war.
Too smart. Too woke!
Too compassionate.
He was above it.
But war he did.
And he killed so as not
to be killed. To survive.
And when his war
was no more,
he came home
to discover
that he too,
was no more.
Sadly, he missed it.
Look both ways in war and peace
because each is merely the absence of the other.
Mind the gaps, the traps, the mines, and bombs.
Win your battles to lose the war.
***
Inspired by “On the Rainy River,” a section in the book The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien.
Click here to read more poems based on the same prompt.
My book.
Click on the cover to see the Amazon page for either print or e-book.
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).
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).
It’s a poem in the form of a song, strongly rhymed and rhythmic. Two famous sea shanties, in addition to The Wellerman (listen, it’s fun), are What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor? and Blow the Man Down.
My assignment was to write a poem with nautical phrases to keep “the sea in my shanty.” While formerly career Air Force, I’m intrigued by submarines and aircraft carriers and the life sailors live. I decided on a poem about submariners, after knowing some and learning more (for a flyboy/landlubber). I used so much jargon that I decided on extensive glossing.
Blind Man’s Bluff
Shipmate, shipmate, useless thou art
you’ll be chief of the crank
or you’ll be walkin’ the plank
unqualled and unfit to smell a chief’s fart.
Yer like a dog with two peters
so confused in that bubble
a bluenose nub, yer nothin’ but trouble
below-decks with the cooks and the beaters.
The worst we got yet from rottin’ o’Groton
yer too fuckin’ green to sit in the box.
Today yer a FLOB washing my socks.
We’ll rig for red and drop you in Boston.
Shipmate, shipmate, you’re new to the crew.
Bubblehead, bubblehead, give me a clue.
Carry on with target prosecution that’s true,
a fish in the water with the firing solution.
What’s that? A dolphin on your chest?
And the COB now thinks yer one of the best.
Sooner than sonar our service’s a test,
an a-ganger now, yer the best of the rest.
With orders all ahead full cavitate,
it’s hard for the skimmers to fully appreciate
the pukas in our honeycomb tube
remember your days as a dumbass nub-noob.
Shipmate, shipmate, here we go again
bubblehead, bubblehead, give us a clue.
We’re just out of Groton all shiny and new.
We’ll be diving in soon, you tell us all when.
Look both ways, but things can hide behind a submarine.
Mind the gaps on the port and the starboard, but out of the water the rudder is right.
Note: I got the title from Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, published in 1998, is a non-fiction book about U.S. Navy submarine operations during the Cold War. I give the book 5 stars.
Gloss: “Shipmate” is pejorative when used sailor to sailor, but not usually otherwise. “Chief” is a senior enlisted rank, but here it is sarcastic. “Crank”s are the shit-jobs on submarines. The “bubble” refers to leveling the sub. A “NUB” is a non-useful body, unqualified without a dolphin badge (like a pilot without wings).
The USN submarine school and museum (I recommend if you like subs and their history) are located near Groton, Connecticut (USA). I’ve heard it called “rotten Groton.”
The “box” is a key location on a sub. “FLOB” is an initialism for freeloading oxygen breather. “Rig for red” is going to red lights to preserve night vision before rising to periscope depth. “Bubblehead” refers to people on submarines. “Fish” in the water refers to a torpedo. US Submariners are awarded a dolphin badge when they become fully qualified. “COB” is the enlisted chief of the boat. “A-gangers” are experienced crewmembers (aka, knuckle-draggers/tough guys). “All ahead full cavitate” is getting away quickly. “Skimmers” are surface ships and sailors. “Pukas” are small hiding places on a sub.
*Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).
My peeps hang out at the VA clinic in Austin.
I know none of them. Prolly agree with very few about a lot of things. It’s okay.
It took six months to get two appointments coordinated
(it’s a long drive), but I like it here (not sure why).
(Almost) all the paid staff and volunteers seem nice
and tolerant (from what I’ve seen, they need to be).
Eye exam. Will I see an optimistic optometrist
or a pessimistic ophthalmologist? New script
and my cataract is ready for R&R (remove and replace).
The drop dead gorgeous (and friendly) young lady in the glasses shop said I looked like Bryan Cranston (showed me an old pic of him) from Breaking Bad.
Go ahead, make an old vet smile, and feel good.
Couple years back a dude came in, sat down to wait,
pulled out his gun and blew his brains out. Yikes!
I guess he wasn’t there to get new glasses.
Some of us got some serious shitty problems.
Later, about half-past noon I got some new hearing aids.
Rechargeables because I drain batteries binge watching House on TV
streaming on Bluetooth. Thank you. I like them.
I am a veteran eligible for most VA services, either alive or dead.
I’m a vet but no old fart hats for me.
I’m neither proud (okay, a bit) nor ashamed of that fact.
Like being old, bald, male, or a Texas Aggie,
it’s just who and what I am. No changes.
Look both ways and see it all.
Mind the gaps, some of us need more help than others.
Ten years my junior, and this pic of Cranston’s character (Walter White) is old.
Our Literary Journey 