I race toward my workspace, now battle station
Code Zebra, ASAP, batten down the hatches!
Ka-boom! Boom! Boom! A trance-like sensation
Shipmates scramble for smokes and matches
Ray, Dale, and Russ don’t show
I think: run, jump; if you die, die free
Not trapped and sealed in steel below
Not buried alive like me!
Kaboom! Overhead bolts shoot from the seams
Above is a warm Hawaiian autumn
I’m weak as blood from my neck streams
Where am I now? Of course, I remember
It’s noon, I have a date with a girl on the beach
She’s eighteen and a bit silly, like me
What a gorgeous sight, she’s now within reach
I’m so happy and complete, so free
7/12/22
Tears Of A Valiant Soldier Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Faraz Ajmal
MAYDAY! MADAY! MAYDAY!
Can anyone hear me!?! Over...
This is the USS American Liberty…
We have capsized in the sea of despair...
coordinates...21st century, 45th U.S. President...please send emergency hope, over...
MAYDAY! This is a MAYDAY!
We have but a few short weeks of rationale
before sinking into an uncharted abyss...please respond! Over....
PLEASE! SOMEBODY! MAYDAY!WHERE IS EVERYONE? The fabric of our identity was founded and built and broken and mended again on the frequency of a decent and lawful society, has the country left the whole band to follow one trumpet? Is it......over? Over….
~Jeannie Cronin
(For more information about U.S.S. Missouri
visit www.ussmissouri.org/learn-the-history)
About Miss U.S.S. Missouri,
Or affectionately, "Mighty Mo!"
Second World War surrender documents
Were signed on her in Bay Tokyo.
She was launched from the Naval Shipyard
In Brooklyn in 1944.
Miss Missouri is not the one
Who chose to battle in war.
She was invaluable in 1986
In Operation Earnest Will.
In the 90's she returned to the Middle East
To fight Iraqi targets still.
A protector, a fighter for the Navy,
Like a mother to her brood,
She kept all within her safe and secure
Until their journey would conclude.
In between her missions
She was granted time to rest.
She'd face more action, yet again,
Her frame and strength put to the test...
She could have been transformed
Into a luxury cruise liner.
But she's so much more significant!
A Museum - War Memorial - War survivor!
Written 18th October 2021
For A Noteworthy Ship contest
Sponsor: Robert James Liguori
Sailing silently on the USS Poetical Mystery.
In a craft, where I joyfully create my own poetry.
The waves beating against the shiny, wooden bow,
Are gentle soundscapes to me now!
That scent of the sea, oh, how it inspires me!
To become a better poet, which I hoped to be.
To pen inspirational poetry,to not fret madly over what to write.
But to actually see my poem, gleaming on the shore in bright sunlight!
The magic of both sea and aquamarine quill.
Humbles this poet's soul and quiets my stormy will.
There's something magically mystical here.
I stand, see the beauteous waves, and in gratitude, shed a tear!
4/4/2021
~1~
The USS Ticonderoga
In January of ’45
Was engaged off of Formosa
When the kamikazes darkened the skies.
Hit on the flight deck and the island,
One hundred forty four died.
An inferno that day and that hour,
Yet the Ticonderoga survived.
The sixth of the Essex-class carriers,
Launched just the year before,
She and her crew served nobly
Til the end of that long bloody war.
Years later I sailed on the Tico;
Together we sailed on the sea.
We journeyed throughout the Pacific
Til she was decomm’ed in ’73.
Most of her sisters are gone now;
They live on in just memories
Where they continue to sail on,
Sailing on far distant seas.
Aboard Harry S Truman, CVN 75
Monumental battle ship,
Within her hull, she seemed alive
Floating city, hauling a deadly airstrip
Creating peace, in the middle East, with the fatal Tomcat
Crew headed for a six month defensive trip
American flag flown, in every sea, ready for combat
Internal soul is her combined crew
Carrying out orders, no rest-weary, ready for attack
Prowlers, Hornets, Tom's we flew
Dark sky, blazes on land
that was when we knew, rumors were true
God on our side, holding our hand
Mission carried out, haven't lost a man.
A. Green
First try at Terza Rima
On the morning of Dec. 7th 1941,
429 Marines and Sailors lost their lives.
As a result of a surprise attack on battleship row,
The brave souls perished to an awful demise.
She was a part of the Pacific Fleet when 9 Japanese,
Type 91 aerial torpedoes pummeled her that day.
And then her port bilge struck the harbor bottom,
Commencing to overturn, she began to rest in the bay.
She was the oldest of all the battleships there,
And the first to go down and capsize.
The battleship’s crew went down with their ship,
As horrid black smoke filled the Pearl Harbor skies.
The USS Oklahoma was moored at Pearl Harbor,
And a memorial was built at Ford Island in 07.
The Servicemen gave their tomorrows for our today’s,
And Pearl Harbor is the tomb of USS Oklahoma BB-37.
They snickered and laughed
As you set sail on your raft
It seems you are daft