"airmen" poems
*
War
is good
for business
both big and small
Profits will rise and make inflation fall
But soldiers, sailors, airmen, warriors all
must heed the call
face fighting
even
Death
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 9:49 AM UTC
Tell me, Gentlemen:
while you soared higher than your fears and dreams could ever reach, into the blue crystal infinity,
did you hear the voices of angels echoing off the wings of geese migrating south for the winter?
how did it feel,
fighting for a nation that measured your worth in disheveled water fountains, mop buckets, dust rags, and potato peelings,
defending stars and stripes stained with the same molten white abhorrence smeared on ******** bombers?
did it hit you like a G force?
when you climbed into that cockpit, audaciously red, the blood rushing to your head, was it bitter hand fulls of cherries sweet?
when you returned home through back doors and alleyways to face an Uncle Sam with burning crosses in his eyes,
when you stood curbside at your own homecoming parade feeling confetti and streamers tickle the bridges of your noses,
tell me how it felt, Gentlemen.
will my brothers and sisters who fight only for tennis shoe wealth, understand the worth of those medals on your scarlet blazers?
if I listen hard enough to those jets breaking the sound barrier will I hear your story?
tell me, Gentlemen,
what was it like to fly?
infinite respects,
Curlie Fries Mcgee
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 8:06 AM UTC
I pray the Lord their souls to keep
Make the days as short as sleep
My kid, an Airman, the time is nigh
Spread their wings and let them fly
Save the world and protect our land
In the air and on the sand
Teach them skills and plant a seed
To live an oath, the Airmans Creed
In their blues, us parents grin
Aim high, our Airmen, Fly, Fight, Win
-Duane Townsend
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 11:34 AM UTC
HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a ****** or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching ***** eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail.
And of course ... there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France...
2.1k
*England 1942
The war was endless she thought it would be over in six weeks when it was declared.
now three years later she found herself in this airfield crowded with young fighter pilots flying Spitfires and the bomber crews flying the stalwart Lancaster bombers.
She was twenty eight now getting to that age of being called a spinster of the parish. The young airmen were interested in her but really only for one thing.
She worked in the photography department of the RAF and developed pictures taken by the recon airmen of France and Germany and Holland .
Recently an American had joined her in the darkroom.
He was a big man and had a crooked smile and big hands he lay on the belly of the bomber plane taking pictures he laughed and said he never fired a gun in his life.
And that he had no beef with Germans he just fired his camera at them.
He liked to develop his own pictures and they worked alongside each other in the darkroom all though the war.
She got used to his crooked smile and big hands. He got used to her being there.
The war finally ended and he went back to the States. Where he opened a small photography store and built a darkroom with his own hands.
When it was finished he returned to England on a ***** steamer to save money. He knocked on the ladies door that had worked with him in the darkroom.
She answered and he asked her for her hand in marraige.
She accepted his proposal and they sailed back to new York.
When she explored the photography shop she found the darkroom.
On it was pinned a note in his nice neat handwriting.
It said I fell in love with you in the dark my love.
But I want you spend the rest of of your life following the light with me.
She was to be my grandma and he was my grandfather.
My father was born a year later
he had a crooked smile and big hands with a love of photography.
His specaility light and shadow.
I was born much later and did not share the family love of photography and was let off by God with only a crooked smile no big hands.
Instead I used to get into trouble at school for writing poems in the margins of my exercise books.
Grandma passed away a little while ago
i was given the task of clearing her personal items from the house.
In her memory box I found the note
in Grandfathers hand that he pinned on the door
of his darkroom so long ago.
It moved me to write this story.
So Go follow the light Grandma
Look for a big man
with a crooked smile and big hands
Hes waiting for you.*
Jul 2, 2016
Jul 2, 2016 at 4:51 PM UTC
Young Americans, all volunteers
Sampling English women and English beer
Over sexed, over paid and over here
In the scrubby bit next to Sally's house there used to stand another cottage. If you scrape away some soil you can find floor bricks. A german fighter tailed some bombers back, shot one down as it made its final landing approach.It crashed short, demolishing the cottage. When Sally first moved in there were bits of metal laying around and dials hanging in the trees. An old boy turned up one day, a surviving crew member. They gave him some bits of his old plane to take home.
On planes with names like
Frivolous Sal, Dauntless Dotty
Million $ Baby, Memphis Belle
Sylvia was a child during the war.They saw a german fighter shot down, the pilot managed to open his chute. He walked up to their house, knocked on the door and gave himself up. Sylvia's dad marched him down to the Police Station.
Braving the freezing hostile skies
Thousands and thousands of you guys
How can we thank you
After you've died?
Next to Diane's house, hidden in the trees are the remains of nissen huts built as accommodation for the airmen. Not much left after 70 years, a few concrete block walls. Now and again she used to see some misty-eyed old guy gazing into the trees.
Long after you're gone
The land remembers
Bears the scars
Of those few years of turmoil
David is a gardener in our village, nice guy, should have retired by now. Don't think his father ever kept in touch.
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 1:16 PM UTC
Go on, young soldier
Go where we say and die.
Take this gun and shoot,
Don’t bother to ask why.
Carry on this war we wage
Though it doesn’t make sense.
We invade anyone we want
And then call it all defense.
Go on, airmen and women.
Climb into expensive planes.
Fly over countries, drop bombs.
Don’t expect anyone to explain.
Line up ground targets well
In your high-power sights.
We have declared them enemies
And they don’t have rights.
Sail on, you navy people.
Turn their seas into ours.
Help our country reduce them
To rubble and dead in mere hours.
Transport equipment and personnel
And help them change things,
Then go to free ports on R and R
And buy your sweethearts rings.
Tromp on, military machine.
Make the world into the USA.
After all, they’re just wogs
And don’t have a thing to say.
If they were worthwhile people
They would be from back home.
Places like Akron, L.A. and Nome.
But they are not real people or
They would not get in our way
And try to stop our holy advance
To be the only people to stay.
When this endless war is done
We will be all that remains.
Be part of the American way, and
**** or get killed for your pains.
Dec 8, 2015
Dec 8, 2015 at 11:57 PM UTC
Dead soldiers, lined up in a row,
Short history, how many more to go?
Dead sailors, some of them in an alley
Not sailing anywhere anymore are they?
Dead airmen, and also dead marines.
What if we’d been where they’ve been?
Men and women, fathers and mothers
We are burying our sisters and brothers.
Hut, two, three, four,
What the hell are we fighting for?
Five, six, seven, eight!
I’ll go to heaven if it’s not too late!
Dead soldiers, not just bottles of beer;
More come back home dead every year.
Used people, we let them get thrown away
By listening to what rich crooks had to say
Their empty promises were all about glory
But remember, most of that word spells gory.
Expendables, in the Big Game of profit.
The proceeds, none of them ever got it.
Hut, two, three, four,
What the hell are we fighting for?
Five, six, seven, eight!
I’ll go to heaven if it’s not too late!
Salute and makes parades, of course
And pin the cheap medals on a corpse,
A kid under orders to invade and ****
Hoping leaders wake, but they never will.
The politicians get rich in office when
They sing patriotic war songs again.
Someday we all can stop all the killing
If love, providence and all gods are willing.
Hut, two, three, four,
What the hell are we fighting for?
Five, six, seven, eight!
I’ll go to heaven if it’s not too late!
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 6:50 PM UTC
Leaving the camp behind, we sped along the road, in a cloud of choking red dust, proceeding towards an area known as The South Australian Dessert. Barren, almost featureless country where the daytime heat was almost unbearable and night time temperatures were close to freezing.
During the journey, my thoughts drifted back to the time of my call up.
I was one of the last to be drafted into The Royal Air Force
My dad needed me desperately in the shop, he was working too hard. I resented the fact that a certain second rate comedian was excused because he claimed it would damage his career, what about my career, and my family? I was chosen-along with six hundred plus airmen, to be a part of Task Force Antler, of which you will hear later, In the mean time, we were waiting in transit in a camp in Glostershire, ROYAL AIR FORCE INNSWORTH. There was nothing to do on camp really, except clean latrines that had been cleaned thoroughly already, I was bored, and my dad needed me. I soon discovered a gap in the system, which allowed me to go home every Wednesday afternoon, and return on Sunday evening. My dad was very pleased with my help, and it became a regular routine, until one Wednesday evening. I had just walked into the shop when the phone rang. It was my friend Harry who had been covering for me. "Bernard, get back to camp, we are being kitted out in the morning! I was very tired, after spending the afternoon hitch hiking approximately one hundred miles, much of which I had covered on foot! I had a quick cup of tea, kissed my mum goodbye, and left holding a sandwich in one hand and my holdall in the other. I was going to need a miracle to get me back on time, it was a notoriously bad route for hitch hiking! more to come.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 7:49 PM UTC
It was a new day, the sun shone in a cloudless blue sky.
It was a special day-one to be long remembered.
I was seventeen, serving Queen and country
in a distant land, a far distant land.
As far from England's shores as it was possible to go.
Two covered trucks awaited us-their engines running.
"Climb aboard chaps, we don't want to keep Dr. Penny waiting.
The corporal sounded tense, we all felt tense- tension was in the air!
In the rest of the camp, the six hundred men would soon be assembling, every man to be accounted for- except for myself and thirty nine other airmen, we had a different role to play. We left the camp. "good luck" someone shouted. "God help us" the white faced corporal said quietly.
To be continued.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 4:32 PM UTC
The flowers grew from the craters where
The bombs ripped open the ground,
Back in that terrible time of war
When God in his heavens frowned,
I just remember destruction, piles
Of bricks where houses had stood,
And years along, new growth began
Where Airmen lay in the wood.
Their plane came down in the poplar trees
That had stood in a long, straight line,
Tearing a swathe of destruction through
Where we’d played in a former time,
And just beyond was the surgeon’s house
That had boasted a Roman Spa,
Now flat, and exposing the Roman Tiles
That survived the previous war.
I’d go down there with Priscilla, who
Lived out by the railway track,
We’d play our games in the cellars
That had lain open, since the attack.
I hadn’t taken much notice of
The flowers that grew in the weeds,
That sprang into life like mushrooms, when
The bombs had scattered their seeds.
Priscilla did, she would smell the scent
That had wafted up from the flowers,
And say, ‘I’ve never seen these before,
They’re new, they’re meant to be ours.’
She’d pick the flowers and take them home
And attempt to make them thrive,
But once removed from their sacred ground
They’d rarely stay alive.
I didn’t handle the flowers as much
So I wasn’t quite as ill,
When she went down with a jaundice that
The doctors couldn’t heal.
They tried their best and they traced it to
The flowers she’d taken home,
A level of radioactivity
Was the reason that they’d grown.
The ground has been cordoned off for good
With a special yellow tape,
While she and I are forbidden to go
To the place that was our escape.
They keep her tied to a wheelchair where
They attempt to hide her sores,
While I’m in a sort of cage since I
Grew skin like the dinosaurs.
David Lewis Paget
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 9:06 PM UTC
All the dead soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
Why can’t we see what all of them have seen?
Why didn’t we notice that nobody had attacked us?
We urged them to invade and **** as if it was practice.
You know, war games that turned out a bit too real?
How come those giving orders don’t seem to feel?
Why do they keep overtaking countries overseas
That did nothing more to us than perhaps displease?
They angered us by having some resources we wanted.
This should remind of how the ancient countries hunted
And robbed, ***** and murdered in their neighbor’s lands.
Why that was acceptable then, nobody really understands.
Yet today, when we are supposed to be so **** intelligent
We are just as bloodthirsty, but dressed a bit more elegant.
We repeat the cycle, generation after mindless generation
And then dare to call ourselves a democratic nation.
How is that possible? Nobody ever came and asked me
It it was fine to send thousands of troops overseas.
Nobody asked me if it was a good thing to **** and maim
Then used poisoned media to make the victims take the blame.
Instead leaders and clerics stood in their pulpits and brayed
That if we didn’t follow their lead, it meant we were afraid,
Or, worse yet, we were the traitors and were all liable
If we didn’t do what they read from old parts of the bible.
It becomes “an eye for an eye”, even when we aren’t hurt.
We come up with stupid axioms to treat others like dirt.
We send our sons and daughters, to invade and be killed
Because some rich ******** demand it on Capitol Hill.
It will be this way forever more if we don’t make it stop.
We, the average voter, must become the traffic cop.
We must elect only leaders without blood in their eye.
If we don’t this big "Godly nation" is nothing but a lie.
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018 at 9:46 PM UTC
Walking but not finding
The struggle feeling like a binding
The possibilities in what could be
Lifted being my own accord
Oh help me please Lord!
A dream becoming my introduction to the sky
Heavens guiding me in what is allowed
The promise in I was born to fly
It’s the take off with the birds and I
A flight beyond any Airmen’s manual
God’s wings in flying me stable
No wing’s required as it is God’s spiritual lift
The Rainbows are just as I pictured them
They are full of color assortments and bloom
I am not ready for Heaven
My time hasn’t come
Doves are purifying my heart
The Earth below looks like a landscape
If people only knew, the sky is God’s escape
Chosen ones only have that right
It’s the warmth being God’s sincere light
I have walked from cloud to cloud
Mystery beyond any mist
I have seen outer space
But there is a further trace
Heaven partially seen, but haven’t been
I am walking the sky beyond my wildest dreams
I have shook hands with the Angel’s
But I can’t arrive at the Heaven’s gates
This is not mistake
My name is not on reservation to date
To the unbeliever, they can’t relate
Faith is what you need
This is written in scripture being a creed
If I continue to walk the closer I will get to Heaven
It’s the longer I continue to pray unto this day
Belief in biblical words I say
The walk can become long and painful
Yet as I walk it shouldn’t be fearful
Praying hands are what keeping me in the air
No man on Earth can compare
It’s the goodness I want to share
Walk on, walk on and continue to walk on
Heaven’s watch and preparation and the journey of preservation, is the movement of my continuous salvation.
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 5:12 PM UTC