the Gentleman three stools down shot an admiring glance her way.
She brushed away a strand of hair, a lovely silver gray.
She slipped a ring off of her left hand and felt a warmth that flushed her face.
It's not like she was unaware of the quick courtships in this place.

"Compliments of the Gentleman" the barman brought her some champagne.
Though somewhat out of practice, she still knew how to play this game.
She turned towards the gentleman with a shy smile and confident
stare.
He moved in to claim his prize and sat in the adjoining chair.

She felt a momentary pang of guilt; this act of infidelity.
Then brushed away that traitorous thought; their love was but a memory.

She hailed from the port of Belfast;
The Night Ferry of the Sterna line.
She was not fast like the modern boats today,
In truth, her best days were behind her.

The Irish sea was rough and unforgiving
And the smell of diesel oil was ever present.
We were headed out to Cairnyan,
with Edinburgh our final destination.

First, we had to weather out the storm;
the worst in memory per my childish imagination.
My parents both stayed calm; they betrayed no sense of fear.
They lent me the courage I did not possess.

My seasick pills helped too,
Or I would have lost my dinner in that gale.
Finally, the ferry slipped into her berth
and was ******* to the dock.

It is a distant memory and, as such,
Half real and half imagined.

for Daniel “Chappie” James, General USAF            
and for the 332d Fighter Group
Being black in America
was the Original Catch,
so no one was surprised
by 22:
The segregated airstrips,
separate camps.
They did the jobs
they’d been trained to do.

Black ground crews kept them in the air;
black flight surgeons kept them alive;
the whole Group removed their headgear
when another pilot died.

They were known by their names:
“Ace” and “Lucky,”
“Sky-hawk Johnny,” “Mr. Death.”
And by their positions and planes.
Red Leader to Yellow Wing-man,
do you copy?

If you could find a fresh egg
you bought it and hid it
in your dopp-kit or your boot
until you could eat it alone.
On the night before a mission
you gave a buddy
your hiding-places
as solemnly
as a man dictating
his will.
There’s a chocolate bar
in my Bible;
my whiskey bottle
is inside my bedroll.

In beat-up Flying Tigers
that had seen action in Burma,
they shot down three German jets.
They were the only outfit
in the American Air Corps
to sink a destroyer
with fighter planes.
Fighter planes with names
like “By Request.”
Sometimes the radios
didn’t even work.

They called themselves
“Hell from Heaven.”
This Spookwaffe.
My father’s old friends.

It was always
maximum effort:
A whole squadron
of brother-men
raced across the tarmac
and mounted their planes.

            My tent-mate was a guy named Starks.
            The funny thing about me and Starks
            was that my air mattress leaked,
            and Starks’ didn’t.
            Every time we went up,
            I gave my mattress to Starks
            and put his on my cot.

            One day we were strafing a train.
            Strafing’s bad news:
            you have to fly so low and slow
            you’re a pretty clear target.
            My other wing-man and I
            exhausted our ammunition and got out.
            I recognized Starks
            by his red tail
            and his rudder’s trim-tabs.
            He couldn’t pull up his nose.
            He dived into the train
            and bought the farm.

            I found his chocolate,
            three eggs, and a full fifth
            of his hoarded-up whiskey.
            I used his mattress
            for the rest of my tour.

            It still bothers me, sometimes:
            I was sleeping
            on his breath.

The chessboard is patterned in onyx and white.
Yellowed ivory are the pieces she plays.
The King is in Jeopardy; her options are few;
Death’s Jet pieces are against her arrayed.
Her opponent is fearsome; a skeletal Knight,
enrobed in a caftan as dark as midnight.
Each move she makes falls before the plan
of the specter’s outstretched bony hand.
As she pauses to ponder if her next move is wise
Her spectral opponent assumes a new guise;
“it’s your move, Dolores.” Her opponent now said
in the guise of her husband, some twenty years dead.
By now almost all ivory pieces are gone,
leaving her only her King and one pawn.
She moves to defend but no chance can be seen
in sending a pawn out to battle a Queen.
Once more her opponent assumes a new face;
Her beloved lost Daughter assumes her Dads place.
She has fought long and hard; long past hope of gain.
Now draining fatigue saps the strength from her frame.
“Mom, it is time to resign without shame;
None can deny you gave Death a good game.”

“All Rise!”
In single file, we justices entered the court
and took our places on the bench,
before us sat the accused; these architects of death.
My eyes were drawn to just one of these men.
He looked faintly Chaplinesque.
He sat there, pale and palsied, along with Goering and the rest.
He had been captured in Bavaria. ****** had thought to flee
to his friends in South America, forsaking Germany.

Perhaps he thought the World would forget,
and thus absolve him of his crimes.
Now he faced the specter of the rope;
There was no thought of ****** serving time.
That was the likely fate of some of these men,
Men like Donitz, Speer and Hess.
Such men could age behind grey walls
And live out lifetimes of regret.

Not for ******, their Fuhrer, for him only death sufficed.
Though we would follow the forms of Justice,
Most would vote to **** him twice.
Perhaps his neck would be snapped by a rope
on some cold grey future date.
Perhaps a simple firing squad
would be Herr ******’s fate.
Perhaps he’d get a bar of soap
and a threadbare linen towel.
then hear the hiss of Zyklon B
in the chambers he had styled.

I wondered how it came to this.
He’d had the means and time.
To put a pistol in his mouth
And atone for all his crimes.
He’d been fleeing from the Russians
when he fell into allied hands.
Those soldiers had shown great restraint,
their sergeant great command.
Now the little corporal sits in the dock,
attentive to every word.
We each now have our part to play
in the theatre of the absurd.

“We have no need of “Heroes” from our “so-called” storied past.”
So they pulled their statues from their plinths, while we looked on aghast.
The generals and the Presidents; the finest men we’d known,
Consigned to History’s dustbin until one remained alone.

Grant’s tomb was desecrated; its plea for peace ignored.
His opponents’ visage shattered; Lee reduced to shards of stone.
“Thomas Jefferson was a ****** who had children by his slave.”
Despite some feeble protests, his statues weren’t saved.

“Churchill’s bust, be gone from us!” They tossed it on the heap.
“Consign him to the flames!” they roared. It was not his first defeat.
Paintings done by Trumbull joined busts made by Houdon
Until nearly all reminders of our country’s past were gone.

Once Washington and Jefferson had joined Lee and Longstreet;
Their Paintings and their statues gone; their names expunged from streets.
They pulled “Old Glory” from its pole and consigned it to the fire,
and danced like Satan’s children as the flames leaped ever higher.

At last, they came for Lincoln to unseat him from his throne.
Of our pantheon of heroes, he, till now, was left alone.
“His fine words and speeches shall not save him from this fate!”
“He was a white supremacist too; he wished blacks would emigrate.”

What he thought of these barbarians is known to him alone.
Like Athena of antiquity, when the “Christians’ razed her home.
They went to work with relish until Abe’s statue had atoned.
For all sins, real and imagined, they left no stone upon a stone.

From age to age we gather, and we pool our ignorance.
At things we think good and moral,, our forebears would take offense.
Tolerance- the last virtue lost, as we approach a darker time.
Our civic altars desecrated; our civilization in decline.

Once upon a time in the land that is down under,
There was a feral pig whose heart was set on plunder.
While wandering the outback he chanced to chance upon
A group of unwary campers and lo, their beer was gone.
The pig was feeling happy, having put away a case,
And he wandered through the bushland with a smile upon his face.
As he staggered through the wilderness he chanced upon a cow.
The poor cow was soon set upon by this drunken sow.
A battle royal then did ensue but our pig was out of luck.
The feisty bovine bested him and tossed him in the muck.

That’s where the pig was sleeping it off when found by this reporter,
Who, at first glance, had mistaken him to be a Trump supporter.