The Intrepid
All he cares about are the jets
Buh-buh-buh-buh
Pow! Pow!
Man Down!
Because he is a boy
He knows nothing
Of the dilemma
I imagine a way
To explain
History through fiction:
I consider a false tale
Of a grandfather who did sail,
A navy mechanic on the bench,
He saved flying Bombers with his Wrench.
He defended us from the Kamikazes
While others wrangled with the Nazis.
She once valiantly ruled the Pacific,
Turned warm clear waves
With happy bright fishes,
Dark with the blood of Axis villains.
What a truly magnificent vessel.
But back to the saga:
My fictional granddad
Would meet a slender lad,
A petty officer above the rest
Whose camaraderie he loved the best
Until the day the sun empire
Ignited the lad’s funeral fire.
No. Too sad a story
To waste on a boy
Who cares nothing
About the dilemma.
Instead it should be sweet
And hetero-normative:
The lad will be in disguise
For actually she was no guy
But my Nanna, a woman with
A warrior’s code
Who wanted a chance to carry her
Country’s load.
Her breasts were bound
Until it was love that she found.
In the epic’s climax
Granddad, himself was about to—
A real World War II vet.
I better not.
This ancient, dying, once-soldier
Would know how impossible
My fiction really is
That my brain is the mush
Of romance novels
And cartoon women.
Now in the pizza establishment
I can see the truth:
She is shackled,
Surrounded by aluminum jellyfish
And seagulls fighting over paninis,
And no man, living or ghost soldier,
Will understand my dilemma.
Hudson River, you do not deserve her.