Treading hard in a sea of lies
With anchor feet and foggy eyes,
Can we yet float another day
With no ship to take us away?
When seas were calm, we saw the shore.
With swelling seas, we see no more
Midst waves of tergiversation
That inundate our great nation.
Flotsam and jetsam next us ride,
Floating, helpless, on surging tide;
The framework of Old Ironsides
Drifts to history’s rocks abide.
Its hardy hull to wormwood turned
While loud progressive termites churned
As our silence helped drown our dreams
With flailing freedom’s gurgling screams.
Categories:
ironsides, endurance, fate, fear, freedom,
Form: Quatrain
massive oak timbers
hearty men piped to action
mighty war machine
planks resisted cannonballs
like our nation, still afloat
Categories:
ironsides, analogy, endurance, patriotic, power,
Form: Tanka
Arise all you, with swords in hands,
and march as one, our ironsides.
Invaders come to take our lands,
our homes, our children and our brides.
Aloft the wind does take the sound
of foreign armies’ Godless tread
and we must not give up our ground
lest every man of us lays dead.
Fear not these men, machines of war,
who from our warriors blood shall thresh,
but like a ravening carnivore,
swoop down to feast upon their flesh.
Make not surrender, make not peace,
trust not your life unto our foes.
Stand tall and proud, the noble beast
that with a noble spirit goes.
March on beneath our banners true
and show how well this land defends.
This day alone determines who
shall be with God today, me friends.
Categories:
ironsides, war
Form: Verse
Only silence dresses her rigging now
To the call of the bosun’s whistle
Her hatches now stand locked and secure
Where long past sailors once lingered
She is the last of the old frigates
Moored in the shallows of Charlestown
Board her and hear her echoes of valor
Haughtily anchored her colors humbly fly
No blemishes on her hull show her battles
Her carronades still sit silently waiting
As she floats mythically at ease
For a moment I can hear the great moans
Her keel and sailors cresting Atlantic waves
To Captain Hulls orders to come about
And charge on the enemy ship Guerriere
On her decks I feel the plight of her dead
Hearing stories of centuries old bulkheads
Astounding feats of a morose pride
To have brought their foe to capitulate
Now she stands tacit though ever grand
And still on her decks and deep in the bowels
The mighty spirit of U.S.S. Constitution dwells
A monument of endurance softly whispering
“Lest we remember long forgotten sacrifices…”
Categories:
ironsides, history, inspirational, loss, mystery,
Form: Free verse