• Gold Crew’s out to sea
    The massive dock sits vacant, asphalt streets now useless.
    Marines eye a shifty stranger, snipers see through scopes, M.P.s’ hands on holsters.

    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    All one sixty-odd in number, each one his heart as stone and courage large.
    Never to see the sun until the patrol is done.
    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    Hidden in icy dark, sunk leagues below my yearning
    For the sight of returning heroes, fathers, gods! My own Odysseus.

    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    Training day-in, day-out for unspeakable crimes that
    If ordered to commit, would return to a homecoming of ash and stillness.
    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    The house sits in an unnatural tidiness, wives with nothing better to do
    As they slump at heads of dining-room tables, wondering if they’re widows today.

    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    As children befriend next-door enemies, for the sake of boredom.
    Mountains wait unscaled, bats and mitts lay wasted, locked away.
    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    As entire lives sit in sun-rooms, waiting for the return
    Of men who wait for seasons, buried under tons of lonely steel and water.

    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    The relief “Blue Crew” enjoys the sun, earth, and bounty
    Of the creation they vowed to protect all those blended years ago.
    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    Once more their duty of solitude is nearly done.
    They desire for the long-forgotten never-there sun.

    Gold Crew’s back from sea
    The dock hung with standards, dresses crowd under loading cranes.
    Upon their mighty steed, Gold stands orderly, tall and proud.
    Gold Crew’s back from sea
    A father’s alien embrace reminds me of patrols past
    When promises of hikes and games were cut short by that red-marked day.

    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    Once more shut up in their mammoth iron whale, like in some rotten parable.
    They hide man’s worst abomination in a place equally foul and bleak, dark and deep.
    Gold Crew’s out to sea
    The horrid cycle repeats, repeats, repeats and repeats!
    Until at long last, an honorable man retires and lives his life.