Twelve O’clock High



Twelve O’clock High

My favorite wraith is at twelve o’clock high

My time to live, his time to die

My fuel gauge read “Not enough gas” when eye fought him last

My time to improvise, his time to realize an imminent demise

My mission was peaceful reconnaissance without hostile contact

My time to usurp regulations, his time to see hell’s damnation

My copilot no longer stirs and seems to be forever quiet

My time to straighten up and fly right, his time to fight for dear life

My ammunition ran low three dog fights ago

My time for short controlled burst, his time to retreat before things grow much much worse

My bartender told me to stick around and to keep my happy feet on the ground

My time to train for another day, his time to pretend that everything is A-Okay

My left aileron is shot up and has been stuck because eye hit a sitting duck

My time to wish for an online mechanic, his time to fly south and into a season of better luck on another planet

My country picked me to fly and fight from sea to shining sea

My time to buck up and do what’s right, his time to check his six and hope eye don’t have him dead-to-rights

My girl is my world, her picture is somewhere around this cockpit of blood, guts and clutter

My time to concentrate on things that become a fighter ace, his time to disintegrate just before entering neutral air space

My landing gear is hereto completely inoperable because eye jammed it into my dear old friend’s once intact, combat ready canopy

My time for an emergency crash landing, his time for deeper ethereal and aerodynamic thoughts of understanding

My favorite wraith is at twelve o’clock low

My time to live, his time to go

Captain Orrin K. Loftin, Explorer

Copyright?  Twelve O’clock, September 2010

[Dedicated to Captain “Big Rick” Lofton and Colonel “Vic-Raven” Lofton]

The Tuskegee Airmen



The Tuskegee Airmen

Give me a stick and a rudder and eye will fly to die with pride with any brother of any color

The love affair with racism is akin to autism which is a disease that will continue to ground and confound us if we do not seek a cure to such a color blindness that constantly confines us

The enemy does not care if we unnecessarily police our expertise because of an ancient belief in an archaic philosophy rooted in slavery.  Their aim is to see us go down in flames and to fill the sky with our blood serving as the dye of the permanent red stain of rain

They say we are not good enough.  They say we do not have the right stuff.  They say that we were born to chuck a spear and to dance around a fire in fear of anything as strange as an airplane

Seeing that we have evolved from a planet of apes it is a foregone conclusion and a fictional delusion that we meet their standards.  Each time they raise them it is our mission without permission to meet them, to greet them and to exceed them

There is no time to whine, opine and wave protest signs saying that our treatment isn’t fair.  With each bomb, bullet and bayonet the war grows hungrier than a whore for more lives to take be it black or white, wrong or right

We are to be assigned to the 332^nd fighter group.  It’s just as good a place as any to be dropped in to the soup of a world war where we are not only taken for granted but are not welcome in or on any part of the planet

News has it that we finally let them have it and achieved the first complete air assault only victory.  Orders by high command are to disband this squadron of baying black sheep.  It seems that such expertise is sorely needed to maintain perfectly operating and well kept army jeeps

It is our right, our duty and our honor to push the envelope, to fly where the air is too thin and to shoot our enemies down with harsh language should we run out of bullets.  Given a chance we will show them all how to dance

Just give me a stick and a rudder and eye will fly to die with pride with any brother of any color and my country tears of thee need not weep for me

Orrin K. Loftin, Explorer

Copyright?  The signing of Edict #9, July 26^th, 1948