Gibberish (read it quick before I come to my senses and toss it)

Some of the people who live in my head
are dirt loving tree hugging freaks.
Then there are those who drive battleship cars
that smell of petroleum leaks.

Christian-like beings in radical veils
made of conservative shroud
woven in ignorance spun on a loom
with no thread of reason allowed

coexist madly with liberal hacks
consuming with plasticized spades
the ugliness flowing from factory farms
while wearing their rose colored shades.

How is it possible reason prevails
and lucid thoughts flow from my pen?
Could it be this is just gibberish and
I’ve thoroughly fooled me again?

When

When all our anger’s overturned
and innocents are free at last
from bloody sword and hellish burn,
when war’s a relic of the past,

when Man’s uncertain enmity
presents, in breach, from evil’s womb
and love becomes our legacy
as Mars is sealed in Satan’s tomb,

a marble, gilded monument,
inscription etched with golden rhyme,
will sing the dirge, the grim lament
to chronicle, to rue the time

when eyes beheld what souls abhor,
when children slept in arms of war.

Ego Eyes

A mirror image piece of mind I seek;
a shade of deepest shadow that I might
portray the picturesque from pots of bleak;
construct the bright of day from dark of night.

In hiding from my self-inflicted pain;
I tuck away the truth; I would protect
the cloth of my umbrella from the rain;
my fragile self from trial by retrospect.

A self-protective sheath, I realize…
a double-cross entrendre, metaphor
would only serve to catch my ego eyes
and focus on the pain I would ignore.

I seek a way to die yet live in death;
a blade to take my life but not my breath.

© Copyright 2004 W. D. Neighbors

Circle Circles

The circle circles roundabout
and finds a way to, neatly, close
without a pause or any doubt.
You’re smiling Mother, I suppose,
for now it’s mine to hold the hand
to soothe the ego, slightly bruised,
to wipe away the tear drops and
repeat the phrases often used…

“My little one, ignore the pain--
tomorrow brings another dawn.
No rose can grow without the rain.
Until the fear and pain are gone

I’ll hold you thus, encircle you
as circles must--- as father's do."

Etchings

What was it took the babies off to war…
the adolescent wonder-fools, at best,
who’d yet to learn the fo'c'sle from the floor,
who couldn’t tell the study from the test?

They nursed upon the warrior code of Duke,
a hero of the legendary screens,
but never saw him scared enough to puke,
and never heard him grunt behind the scenes.

The military called them to a man
except the golden children in reserve
whose Daddies knew the secrets of the plan
and all the students grading on the curve.

Opposed were led directly to the blame,
the dead were on the news before us all.
Survivors had to live or die with shame
for not becoming etchings on the wall.

34

The first ship I served aboard in the U.S. Navy was an Essex class aircraft carrier (USS Oriskany). We (the ex crewmen) tried to save her as a museum, not enough money. She narrowly avoided the scrap heap several times.

But, after a long and valiant battle to stay alive, she was to have an ending fitting to the american naval hero that she is. A burial at sea. She was sunk as an artificial reef with an appropriate monument nearby etc. The final deployment of Ex-USS Oriskany CV/CVA-34 was completed on May 17th 2006. Despite early concerns that she had landed on her starboard side, she was found to be sitting perfectly upright in 212' of water, with the flight deck around 135', and the top of the structure at 69' in the Gulf of Mexico, 22.5 miles offshore from the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, FL, Coordinates - N30:02.542 W87:00.374

For more see the MBT (Maximum bottom time) divers website at mbtdiversers.com/

34

A call has come we can’t ignore,
the bells of glory chime…
to gather on a distant shore
a crew from out of time.

We come to grieve the many dead,
the shipmates lost back then...
and as we hear the tributes read
our thoughts return again…

to ports of call in foreign lands
a distant, brighter day,
when life was held in younger hands,
ashore and underway.

We listen to the bugles call
and wipe away the tears
as names and faces we recall
across the many years.

And as the circle draws an end,
forgive the tears we weep
to see our gray and weathered friend
committed to the deep.

~ © 2005 By: W.D. Neighbors ~

"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast for I intend to go In Harm’s Way."

John Paul Jones to M. de Chaumont on 16 November 1778.