20150905 (war recruitment)

High flying F-16s drama, aerobatics, ear-popping sound-barrier-breaking
dangerous close drill maneuvers, using enough fuel during one pass to drive
all the cars at the show there and back home. Expensive recruitment propa-
ganda--bravado--braggadocio. Pilotted planes are a thing of the past.

Drones--what they're recruiting pilots for. Drone flies over Yemen, Somalia,
Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. They don't fly high or fast. People can
hear them overhead but cannot hear the Hellfire missiles that kill them.
American pilots sit in containerized modules in Syracuse NY or Creech
Air Force Base in Nevada controlling these death deliverers from a comfort-
able lounge chair in air-conditioned comfort. It would not be unusual for
These pilots to be able to eat with their families. The pilots can't take the
stress and are quitting these jobs faster than they can be filled citing PTSD. 

War’s what they’re selling at the airshow

Every year this year’s no different

For a kid who was thrilled to see WWII

Gun camera footage on our 1948 twelve

Inch black and white Admiral the nostalgia

For knight-like jousting of those loud

Propeller driven fighters of  the second 

War is re-aroused in each Star Wars flick

From the first to the latest from the sixth

To the third or whatever they’re doing

This time like so much of war it’s high 

Romance till the blood starts to flow 

The bodies burn suffocate crash it’s 

A damn good show till you think these

Are the planes flattening people overseas

Just once they should let the people see what

They’re buying have one of those F-16s

Swoop near the crowd unload a

Cluster bomb on the runway

Since only forty percent of the clusters

Detonate on hitting the ground

We could have the children run onto

The tarmac to pick up as much unexploded

Ordnance as they can carry just for effect

They wouldn’t really explode like mines 

No a cap inside would make 

A loud but harmless clap

A flag would pop out to say you’ve

Lost your hand or you’ll never see again

Or you held me too close 

Now bang you’re dead

Then the marketing people

Could give out pencils trifold

Questionnaires to see how popular

Such weapons are among the citizenry

We’d hold a parade of all the kids who

Lost their lives after just one of these

Bet that bunch won’t rush the street

For candies tossed by politicos in

Memorial day parades any time soon

But they won’t do it too realistic

They came to have fun watching

Warplanes do fun things loops spirals

Tight dagger flights pop the sound

Barrier let the people feel proud of their

Country celebrate their heroes

Not one of the unmanned drones 

Will be on display they’re

All too busy killing the new way

Everybody loves a good video game

Except the pilots who do it who shoot

Hellfire missiles at targets barely identified

ISIS cuts off heads with a knife and bare hands

Hellfires separate far more body parts

So much more quickly sucking oxygen

From those standing too close

Not a proud comparison to judge

Who’s less barbaric the pilots of drones

Can’t see who they’re killing and it

Bothers a lot of them that they’re 

Wiping up bugsplats thousands of 

Miles away eventually it gets in their dreams

They can’t take it request reassignment

When they see their kids at home they wonder

If they blew away any 

Just like their own

c. J.S.Manista, 2015