Posted by Atticus on September 7, 2004, at 20:30:17
Children of the Blade
Every evening
They come rumbling,
Chrome thunder lumbering
Overhead,
As they struggle
Through clouds
Dipped in crimson,
A lost squadron
Flying
Wingtip to wingtip
On an mission
Without end,
The green goggles
Of the crews
Fogged
With steaming
Teardrops,
The taste of salt
So very heavy
On their lips
And tongues,
As they weep
With regret
With anguish
With exhaustion,
And whisper endless
Streams
Of prayers
For permission
To at long last
Land.They are my brothers,
They are my sisters,
Fellow
Children of the blade,
Who left
Shiny silver contrails
That sliced
Through an
Atmosphere
Of sinew storms,
Of corpuscular crosswinds,
Stiletto-sharp B-52s
That cultivated blossoming
Hellfire bouquets
Of blood
Like billowing napalm,
Left them
Soaring
In their wake,
As they made
Their lethal
Bombing runs
Across fleshy landscapes
That rose and fell
Among meandering
Blue-tinged ridges,
Friendly fire
Directed
At cell-strewn
Battlefields
By pilots
Who sat
In cerebellum cockpits,
Believing this carnage
Would pave the path
To the peace,
To the war’s end
They so desperately
Sought.And I once
Flew with them,
My comrades
In self-destruction,
Determined
Relentless
Ruthless
As I trained
My bombsights
On the geography
Of my wrist,
Blowing the hell
Out of the
Blue-eyed enemy
I faced
In every reflection
In every moment
In every thought.But I was seized
By a sheer
Animal terror
That I had not
Expected,
Dashing
From the cockpit
And sprinting
To the door,
Bailing out
On the silk
Of a paramedic parachute
As one by one,
The other planes
Ran out of fuel,
Falling into
Tumbling
Spirals
That ended
With the pilots
Wrapped
In the crumpled
Wreckage
Of their own
Fallen bodies.So now they
Who completed their missions
Call to me
Over the crackling static
Of spectral
Rotting radios
In the frozen silence
Just before dawn,
Their sharp, shiny jets
Locked
Into an eternal formation,
And they beg me
To join them,
And they beg me
To save them
As they move
Through maroon twilight
The color
Of dried and desiccated
Blood.
And though
I walk on
Through the waking world
And they float
In the space
Between blackness
And sunrise,
I still hear their
Calls
Over the headset
Now forever
Resting unseen
Atop my head,
As they remind me
In a litany
Spoken
Through
Worm-riddled lips,
“We are all,
All of us, brother,
Children of the blade.”
-- Atticus
poster:Atticus
thread:387840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040828/msgs/387840.html