Today I was prompted to write a poem titled “The (blank) of (blank).” The first blank was to be a kind of plant or animal, the second blank an abstract noun.
The poem was to have at least one simile that plays on double meanings or otherwise doesn’t make “sense,” and describe things or beings from very different times or places as co-existing in the same space.
The Dove of Independence,
The Dove of Resistance
Are you Texan, Mexican, Mourning
or just a dove? Like a pigeon, a bird,
or an easy mark?
A Vlad target in late fall, even some of
the white wing clan; are you game
on those special occasions?
Does the cooing help you or me
make peace from your innocuous innocence
or your purity? Do you pacify or fight on?
Maybe a little less like white wing
and more like Blackhawk to win the war.
Can we deal with that winning pair?
Love conquers all, but right now
they need some hard ass, bald eagle, boom-boom.
May art like Palance be their winning war dance.
Or can VZ in the UKry find a winning way,
and stand up with humor to the wounded bear.
There’s no independence without resistance.
Look both ways at peace through conflict.
Mind the gaps but win the damn war.
Click on the meme for the NaPo page and more poetry.
Maybe I was a bit heavy with this prompt, but here is the story of Blackhawk and the white winged dove.
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).
Friday is another fictioneers day and Saint Paddy’s Day. I’m mostly Irish, but I never drink green beer and I seldom eat corned beef and cabbage. Who tells a better story than an old Irishman? Who does a better poem read than a young, attractive Irish actor?
Unable to find a suitable Irish lad or lass, Mistress of her storybook realm of fibs and fables, Rochelle, in her high magnificentness, dove down under to Australia. From there, she has shanghaied the prompt photo from Rowena Curtin to lead us into the temptation of creating a complete story with fewer than 101 words.
Click on Rowena’s pic to get the lowdown from Sydney on Rochelle’s blog page. When you’ve written your scoop, you can post it with all the other glorious wonders on inlinkz dot com (see Tim’s photo at the bottom of this blog).
If you can do this (and you certainly can), we promise to read it and comment (nicely) with hopes of delightful reciprocation.
Genre: Biographical Fiction
Title: Decisions Made
Word Count: 100
***
He felt betrayed. Trapped. Cheated. Conflicted. Confused. Rage simmered, but what burned him up most was his own self-pity. He was numb. What could he do?
Escape to Canada was wartime treason. If he joined the Army as a rifleman (eleven bravo), he’d be forced to kill or to die. He wanted neither. Everyone he knew would consider him a coward.
The walls closed in. What to do?
He could fight and die in a just war. This one was unjust.
He relented and lived through it all.
Then he wrote about it. Now they would all know his truth.
***
Look both ways because “the bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over.”
Mind the gaps because “you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.” (Quotes are from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien)
Click on Tim O’Brien to read more micro-fiction stories drawn from Rowena’s photo.
Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and to read more 63 word poems or prose.
Down Together
Helicopters are big-ass, noisy targets — preferred bullseyes for AKs or rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers. They’d get enemy kills and loot from the dead machine with one lucky shot.
To live, we flew high or desperately, dumbass low — at treetop levels or less. Other altitudes made things too easy for them. They heard us coming. We did our best to live and to kill.
Look both ways and be a zigzagging target. It’s hard to hit what’s moving.
Mind the gaps so you know where the shots came from.
The video with this Billy Joel song is six minutes, but it was my inspiration to the prompt word.
Kicking off the twelfth month of twenty-twenty-two, artist, businesswoman, swimmer, writer, mother, wife, sister, (I could go on), and our friend and fictioneer leader, Rochelle, has provided us with a peek out from Roger Bultot’s window with his inspiring photo as a bridge to creativity.
It goes like this. We look at the picture and write whatever story (beginning, middle, & end) we want. Easy, right? It’s doesn’t even have to be pure fiction. But we must prove our micro (or flash) – (non-)fiction bone fides by trimming our stories to any number of words under 101. Try it!
The directions are simple and available on Rochelle’s blog page, reachable with a simple tap, click, or press on Roger’s picture, like it was a detonator.
Genre: Espionage Fiction
Title: Truncated Bridge
Word Count: 100
***
Looking out the window, I felt stress. Ignorance fed by fear. After this job, I’d comfortably retire. To what? Sad.
The morning sunrise lacked hope. It was threatening. A foreboding bloody sky in a randomly meaningless universe. I didn’t care. It was time.
I lit what I promised myself was my last cigarette and sat by the window as I’d done hundreds of times before. When I saw the target on the bridge, I pressed the detonator button and watched the explosion. I always hated all the collateral damage. The news would blame the old bridge. Everyone lies. Everyone dies.
***
Look both ways to find happy endings.
Mind the gaps because that’s where the bridges collapse.
Click on Tom Hanks in the Bridge of Spies movie to read more stories based on Roger’s photo.
And for the music lovers among us, I present the Eagles singing “Seven Bridges Road.” If it works. I suppose I took the bridges thing a bit too far.
Click the graphic to see the prompt, other poetry information, and links to more poems.
Today my Monday NaPo challenge was to “write a poem about a very large thing:” a mountain, whale, skyscraper, planet, or … an airplane.
B-52 BUFF
I was in uniform when I first watched, from a safe distance,
100-yards away from the air base runway, standing out
among the brown shin oak, scrub-brush prairie of west Texas,
by then the second largest US state in size, while
dozens of B-52s took-off separated by mere seconds.
Wider and longer than half a football field,
each lumbering silver giant powered by eight jet engines
seemed to groan as it gradually lifted
its 450-thousand-pound gross payload airborne,
mocking gravity while ostentatious clouds of black smoke billowed,
a roaring thunder shattered my ears as earth trembling
vibrations shook my entire eighteen-year-old body.
My friend scoffed when I said I would. But later,
as a less young crew dog at the heart of the beast,
I flew the Big Ugly Fat Fucker, affectionately BUFF.
The B-52 bomber set at my fingertips unnatural
science-fiction levels of destructive power
unknown in all the wars throughout human history.
The BUFF leaked fluids, stank of puke and piss,
was cramped and uncomfortable, dangerous
even to us, who both loved and hated her. She was old,
ugly, unglamorous, and deadly. However, together
with us, the whole was greater than the sum of parts.
Eventually hundreds became few. Only bones
and a few isolated squadrons remain today,
approaching 60 years hence.
The missions were long, tough, and thankless,
and occasionally as scary as hell itself.
So, why are my memories framed with such palatable pride?
Look both ways and all around for enigmatic things great and small.
Mind the gaps but ignore the flaws.
Anybody can do the easy.
Embrace the suck.
B-52s launching at minimum intervals of 12 seconds. The black smoke is created by water being injected into the engines and stops after a few minutes.
I had started a different essay for this post when my wife informed me that our 43-year-old daughter asked this question. “How can these people talk so calmly about nuclear war?” Calmly? I needed to get caught up on the news. Who is calm?
As we discussed our distant past, Yolonda said, “You know, when you would go for a week of nuclear alert, I never thought much about it. It was your job. Nuclear war was simply your job.” She’s right. I was the Radar Navigator (bombardier) on a nuclear armed B-52D either at Carswell Air Force Base (AFB), Texas, or later at Andersen AFB, Guam (and at other “satellite” locations).
At that time, we were in the midst of the “Cold War.” If Russia (or any country) launched a nuclear attack against the United States, my crew would be in the air within minutes, turning north to strike pre-determined targets in the Soviet Union. Basically, WWIII.
I told her, “I know exactly what damage nuclear bombs (or missiles) can do.” For eight years, it was my profession. For one week each month, it was my life: 24/7. The concept of nuclear war was real, possible, conceivable, but even then, somehow unthinkable. We did not believe it would happen because we would retaliate in kind. That was called second strike and we had plans for a third. The strategy was called mutually assure destruction (MAD). It was real. It was then.
Through my elementary and high school years (Cuban Missile Crises), through Viet Nam, and on up until my first day of pre-flighting and “cocking” a loaded B-52, the threat of nuclear war was impressed upon me repeatedly. Doomsday was both a reality and a joke.
Today I read that Vlad P. has threatened the world with nukes if anyone interferes with his war on Ukraine. The no love lost between Russia and Ukraine goes way back, but the point is the threat. He could nuke any nation in the world—and certainly in Europe.
I’ve also read that Russia may use nukes against Ukrainian resistance. These people are fighting for their right to exist. The only thing Ukrainians want from Russia is to be left alone and to live in peace. But Russia does not care. Their excuse? The Ukrainians don’t like them. Dah?
While it would be unprecedented for nukes to be used in such a limited conflict/war, Ukraine lacks the wherewithal to assure Russia’s destruction. We, on the other hand, in conjunction with our allies could provide such assurance. I would like them all, especially Vlad P., to believe we would.
On the lighter side, in 1964 (age 18), I sat in a theater on a Strategic Air Command base, and I watched this movie (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). Little did I know my future would not be so funny, although I confess, I did my best to make it so.
Look both ways and take a side.
Mind the gaps between the wars and push for peace.
Morality is not a spectator sport.
American men and women at war,
fighters. May I call them warriors?
For their military service
we want to thank them.
Combatants
share experiences
only they understand.
Only they feel it.
Requisites are hated enemies,
courage, weapons, desire for glory, fear,
comrades, pride; and a cause
to die for, one worth killing for.
There’s more.
Much more.
They carry much.
To fear death, or not? To love
and despise simultaneously?
Is war forever part of humanity?
Are we the only creatures
that kill our own for no reason? Just to kill.
To cause death unnecessarily?
Is that combat?
Look both ways for glory and dishonor.
Mind the gaps between mind, heart, and soul.
I came across this, so I tweaked it a bit for Mother’s Day. At the time, I didn’t agree with Mom about my decision. But I now realize that she was probably right.
Combatant
It could have been me.
A nod, a blink, or an “okay”
and the next forty-five
years …
(Had I not been killed, maimed,
or driven insane,
as so many young men were.)
… would not have been anything
like the memories I have today,
fifty-seven long years hence,
with contrition, feeling a strange
impersonal loss mired in guilt.
Personal, hidden, illogical
survivor syndrome. I can’t
make sense of it. The feelings
of a warrior, but who wasn’t.
Life choices are often made
thoughtlessly, in a blink.
I could be dead. Change the past?
Not on your life. Or mine.
And Mom would have been
so pissed at me, Jack M.,
and the entire fucking Corps.
Thanks, Mom.
Look both ways at guilt for life:
fortune or folly.
Mind the gaps in the mindless wars with reality.
This morning, NaPo challenged me to write a poem that responds to another poet’s poem. I chose one titled “Natural History” by Leroy V. Quintana, one of five of his Viet Nam poems featured on PBS. But I could have responded to any, or all, of the five.
How did it feel?
To know you must go to Nam, to maybe die,
or go to jail, or to Canada?
To go there to kill any enemy, VC, NVA, or…?
To be overcome by fear, and to be forced
To kill anything that moved?
You’ve felt such fear I’ve never felt.
Not just some fight or flight twinge,
but big, sweaty, trembling, shit-your-pants fear,
both rational and sometimes crazy,
a fear that never goes away,
fear mixed with phenomenal anger,
when everything slows down, or stops,
where all you see, hear, feel,
smell, or taste wants to kill you, to maim you?
To suck the blood from your body?
And you can only live by killing him first,
or by not fighting, or shooting into the darkness,
or not, for fear of being exposed, or by tossing
grenades, or by friendly artillery fire so near you,
it may kill you? And most of all, how did it feel
to leave your comrades behind, to fly home
to clean clothes, a steak dinner, and
a thankless nation ignoring you,
wishing we’d all just go away? Trying to forget?
Look both ways along the path of a warrior,
that person sacrificed for the good of some system
like Capitalism, Communism, or Catholicism.
Mind the gaps for the fears and tears of real people,
both the living and the dead.
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