https://flic.kr/p/qGBbJC

Continuing in the Series for my eldest daughter Angie, based on
original Twilight Zone series, Season 2, Episode 1

King Nine Will Not Return
by Michael Romani

The place is Africa in 1943
Where war spits out so violently
From the dusty blue skies overhead
The sandy graveyard swallows its dead
A medium bomber, Air Force, King Nine
Has taken flak in its wing, almost as if by design

Crash landing in the Libyan desert; never to return
These are the lessons mankind never learns
Captain Embry finds himself alone and stranded
A survivor's guilt at the loss of those he commanded
None of the past will return this day
Not today, tomorrow, or any other day

Remembrance of fragmentary parts
Hits the captain straight in his heart
Climbing on the downed plane, he scrambles for their names
Puzzled and scared, he feels that he is to blame
Calling and crawling, piecing together the history
Captain Embry stretches to understand the mystery 

Static is heard on the airborne radio
But if there's any connection it's merely a shadow
An empty pack of smokes sits as it's own metaphor
He searches for its logic and maybe something more
Lonely in his torment, he knows that he is responsible
No matter how loudly he calls -silence is incomprehensible

Lost in his thirsty sense of hallucinations 
He sees the lost in their many manifestations
Calling out in anguish for those he has lost
His soul is crushed unable to bear the cost
Pondering at the morbid twists of his mind
Lost in the uncertainty as of if he sees or is blind

What is real and what is not
What's best remembered or best forgot
Stumbled on grave marker tells its tale
All from the flak that struck the plane's tale
And suddenly in the sky are jets before their time
As contrails leave their imprint as mental crime

He struggles hard to remove the plane from the sand
In a hysterical attempt to save those he commands
There in a desert's instilled bit of inference
It becomes his private joke in illusory reference
The sun fills his head with all sorts of thoughts
Those that he should and those he shouldn't ought

Phantoms on the desert sand are not real
He collapses praying to God to know the deal
It turns out to be indigestible front page news
A remembrance of his haunting unpaid dues
He wakes up in the hospital from this crazy dream
Survivor's guilt strikes hard and can be obscene

It's those things we hide so very deep inside
That crush us, curse us and kill our pride
Going back deep within a wounded mind
Retracing steps that can't be left behind
Sand pours out of the good captain's shoe
No longer hidden, but, in plain view

Enigma lies buried in the desert sand
A question mark of broken wings we seek to understand
Silent grace marks the lonely desert's shrine
The real consorts with shadows and then confuses time
Questions that require answers that no one gives
A quest called loneliness that every lost soul lives

(c) January 29, 2018  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved