Posts from the ‘Poetry’ Category

The Weight of Our Years

by Garland Davis

For a time, the old men would tell of years and wars past…
Stories and laughter among a forest of empty bottles
scattered in a graceless pack across the table.

Rain filled the darkness outside the window,
and the tables filled with memorabilia abetted the
desperation with which they yearned for those long gone days.

Reluctant to leave the companionship, once again
found for a few days at the spring reunion
and held close in that bitter pall of tomorrow’s leaving.

But, the thrill of our shared derangement, and stories
true and not that evoked both joy at remembering
and sadness, knowing that one cannot go back.

The old men remain, with their lives caving in around them,
crushed by the weight of years and lost among memories and bottles.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing, but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Unstable Cliff

by Leo Cunningham

I stand there,
large as life.

Dangerous,
sharp edged cliffs.

Piercing eyes watching a surfer’s freedom.
Feet stuck in the sand,
head in the clouds.

Beaten by the rough sea.
Chipping away slowly,
pieces of me.

I remain unmoved.

With a sign on top, labeled…
“Stand Back! Unstable Cliff!”

Leo Cunningham enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Infantry and advanced to Recon serving in Operation Enduring Freedom, on a Mobile Training team to Yemen, in support of the Special Operations Command. Upon his honorable discharge, he moved to California to pursue his passion for storytelling, graduated from the USC: School of Cinematic Arts and studied Film and Television Production. Currently, he is an independent filmmaker and founder of Wood Table Productions, an independent video production company. He resides with his wife and three sons on a family farm and writes original poetry, novels and screenplays.

Here’s to Us

by Andrew Jones

Here’s to you, my famed big brothers of ‘Nam.
Of Belleau Wood, the Chosin Reservoir
Tripoli and Beirut, Mog’ and Inchon.
Here’s to you, to us and to the Corps.

To Chesty and Smedley and Dan Daly
To the giants and the legends of lore.
Though moving forward has been hard lately
Here’s to you, to us and to the Corps.

Here’s to the ones who did not make it home.
Whether in the sands, a jungle, a shore,
We live in your honor—never alone.
Here’s to you, to us and to the Corps.

We’ll meet at The Gates, with wings we will soar
Here’s to you–to us–and to the Corps.

Andrew R. Jones is a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Iraq War and has been featured in over a dozen publications, including International War Veteran’s Poetry Archives, War Writer’s Campaign, Outrageous Fortune, and The Blue Guitar and has authored two collections of poetry titled Healing the Warrior Heart and A Warrior’s Crown. He is currently pursuing an English Creative Writing degree with Arizona State University and lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife and two children.

The Death of the MRAP Tactical Commander

by Kristine Iredale

Radio cord coiled around my forearm like a snake
Hissing canons, soon expelled outside the wired gates.
I woke to knowledge of good and evil.
When I died they dragged my body from the Inferno
As the MRAP sent smoke signals to Heaven for days.

In 2008, Kristine Iredale deployed with the Washington State Army National Guard’s 81st Brigade Heavy Combat Team in Operation Iraqi Freedom. She is currently a student at Eastern Washington University.

Pointman Cometh

by David Pointer

Pointman incubated inside forgotten getaway car fumes

Pointman incubated inside father’s forgotten getaway car fumes

Pointman marinated inside social class exclusion, adhesions

Pointman marinated inside housing project fragmentation

Pointman marinated in echoes of other people’s flash sterilization

Pointman percolated under sequential compression devices
to include exclusionary collegiality in the school to nowhere

Pointman climbed atop the government cheese truck surveying asylum district of mental health intervention

Pointman climbed onto a previously asphalted path made possible by bio-chemical business agenda portfolios burning villages elsewhere

Pointman side-stepped onto a coerced-choice sidewalk of upward mobility illusion

Pointman was finally intercepted by the Marine Corps recruiter with sign-up papers

Pointman finally donned his splash guard goggles as other abnormal urinalysis-test teen applicants felt the blowback of emptiness, alienation, unfairness splashing into their eyes

Pointman arrived at Marine Corps Recruit Depot ready to kill everyone – like he oath-promised the President he would do

David S. Pointer served in the United States Marine Corps as a military policeman from 1980-1984.

In Another Country a Small Town Is Forgotten

by Michael McManus

One minute you’re telling lies
to your buddy about cold beer and hot women
in some Austin bar that summer
before you went downrange
and into the minute after
where lies are forgotten because
the shot you hear
is followed by the near simultaneous
unforgettable sound of bullet
smashing into skull and exiting
into a slow-motion moment
when your buddy collapses face down
on the dusty ancient road of a city
one-hundred thousand miles
from the small Ohio town he grew up in
and left behind to come to where
he would leave his name as another
who would never hear
the suppressive fire that explodes
in his defense on the suspected location of the shooter
who won’t be found by the fear-faced boys
that go on screaming through their M4 carbines
that will turn them into men
as the field radio operator calls in coordinates
from behind a Humvee
where he wants to stay invisible
unlike the Apaches that soon racket overhead
hoping for a hard target to destroy
but for you it doesn’t matter
because as you cradle your buddy’s head
it’s like trying to piece together
a shattered clay pot.
And there’s blood on your hands.
So much blood on your hands.

A Pennsylvania native, Michael P. McManus has lived in Louisiana since 1986. He began to write in the late 90’s. His poems and short stories have appeared in many journals. He has been awarded a writing Fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Virginia Award and Ocean’s Prize for poetry. He is a Navy Veteran and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

The Wall

by Trista Miller

We arrived, casualties came. We were prepared to treat the “injury” but unable to touch the “wounds”. We knew how to treat the Soldier who lost a limb but next to him, fully conscious, was you…covered in proof of the gravity of the attack; and I can’t help you. We scramble to locate water to wash away the reminder, the remainder of your friend. You want out of your own skin, your own thoughts and I have no drug, no tourniquet to cut off the flood of memories from washing back in. You are the unanticipated casualty that we are not prepared for; our preparation has prepared us to avoid this kind of pain, this kind of awareness of deep, inner, helplessness. You cry out, a cry that lives in all of us but remains suppressed by our own walls, but here you are-raw, hurting, angry, exhausted and your walls are down- blown down on impact. You are vulnerable, showing your injured spirit that is searching for comfort, connection, empathy from another, another spirit willing to be vulnerable, willing to climb over their wall to meet you, to bring the kind of healing you need. You are surrounded by injured spirits whose walls are still too tall to climb, still high and functioning. Instead we offer sedatives and MEDEVACs. Finish your healing elsewhere. Our walls are too high and we need them to function, in fact, we just pick up pieces of your crumbled wall to add to our height.

Revelation 21:4

Trista Miller served in the Army as a Medical Service Officer from 2003-2012. Assigned to 26th Bridge Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, she deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III and IV. She is married and working at the Stetson University College of Law. Her writing can be viewed at her blog: http://thelowerstory.wordpress.com/.

The Dress Uniform

by Kay Boulware

(To Her Father)

A metallic brilliance adorned the table as she buffed away with steady strokes the thick white cream that she had smoothed onto familiar brass objects just moments before. Whenever he asked, this was a task that she assumed with pride and dedication. After all, he was her father. The eagle, the star, and the buckle were among the combat insignia that were her playmates, earnest comrades that came alive on a polished playground of preparation, allegiance and love. They were her father’s medals.

She cleaned and shined with devotion and a girlish hope of tales from memories of faraway places.

…Air raids, fire, plunder, ash, and bombed and broken cities;
Torn banners, distant munitions, battle hymns, unspoken words and penetrating stares in a foreign tongue, and liberty scripted in history;

…Faded words of love on paper weathered by time, discovered in a fallen soldier’s pocket, destined for a vacant heart left behind; and

Fragrant whispers that echo still from kimonos of rivers, misty mountains, and dynasties of green teas and silk…

But the memories were not hers to remember…they belonged to her father.

She would keep them just the same.

Kay Boulware’s father served during World War II and the Korean Conflict. As a former “army brat,” she has never let go of the spirit of the military family. “The Dress Uniform” came from a childhood memory of shining the pins and ornaments that adorned the uniform of her father, Master Sergeant Winthrop Jones Boulware.

The Oldest Lie

by Michael Fay

They will not rise
These dead
They will not turn again
Mudsweat faces to the sun
Nor to the sounding gunfire run

Down they’ll go
Down deep and deeper
To the deepest gravity all souls obey
For the ever
And the day

Mothers, they will long recall
Friends awhile, then not at all
And the dead will perfectly remain
Dead to one
And dead to all

Two mothers asked
About their sons
Please help us know a little more
Of their last days
Just before

So called again, the old art must arise
To raise for mothers the old, old lies
I was there and saw them die
And now again to mothers ply
The resurrected oldest lie

Chief Warrant Officer-2 Michael D. Fay served as the official combat artist for the United States Marine Corps from January 2000 until the last day of 2009. In this role Fay deployed twice each to Afghanistan and Iraq during the current GWOT, and once as a free-lance correspondent and illustrator for the Kandahar Journal of Canada’s National Post and New York Times newspapers. He organized and directs The Joe Bonham Project, a cooperative venture of the International Society of War Artists and the Society of Illustrators that visits with and sketches America’s most profoundly wounded combat veterans.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Over

by Aaron Johnson

Wish upon your star to behold your light.
Behold your joy again renewed.
Have and hold joy in living freely gifted you always and forever. Your life rang true as sunshine earth bound scattering to light the way before you.

To this soldier of heart, might, mind and strength. Live as ready proclamation carried by every standard bearer as found readily inscribed on the banners of your kind. Live to make right any discounting the names of those who served and who are gone. Live to ring true again as those toeing these stolid lines flowing red from the Senate’s ink wells as the wings of Phobos and Deimos encircling Mars.

Live to hold the record straight on their service. Live to speak their name aloud. Live for those missing among us. Live to speak on this service noble among the living and the sometimes dying. Live to speak these names now on record here at home for those returning. Live for those alive.

Speak for those who toed this imagined line somewhere, chalked on distant shores far from those they loved. Speak as a ping homeward bound regards those who bled, those who died and those continuing on in service. Live to speak their names aloud as a roll call to this kind still found numbered among the living and the brave. Live.

Aaron Johnson was a 91B airborne medic in the USAR and UTNG. He later joined the full time Navy during the Persian Gulf War. He was worried he’d miss out on the action of OIF/OEF, and became a contractor (2008 – 2010), flying in and out of both conflicts the equivalent of 6 times around the globe. He recently created the X-Alta Foundation to assist veterans.