Tarac Ridge Poems - Of Equal Importance Nick Armbrister

pic by PJ Reed

Tarac (for Stone and Kurosawa) We busted our balls To get up there Over a kilometre high Where the warplanes live And die a violent death Meeting their end up above On towering lonely slopes As did Lt Stone and Sgt Kurosawa On the same day seventy six years ago To the day we went there As others before had For we had a job to do The missing answer to find To locate the remains of a lost pilot Named Stone from America Who flew a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk In mortal battle with his nemesis Kurosawa from Japan With his Nakajima Ki-27 Nate Both died that day February 9 1942 And both haunt those inclines One is angry and lost One found wants to go home One likes Hello Kitty But not the one you think For my drink tumbler fell And the guide missed it It stopped where Stone said And there we dug dug dug And found his airplane Or what was once his warplane In pieces that were scrap But had meaning to our group For it was this plane That brought us here Many hours of climbing Swearing and sweating To touch the clouds And be where both hit At what cost? Two planes smashed Two pilots dead The American protecting Villamor The Philippines' best pilot Who flew his biplane A Boeing Stearman On a recon mission The same type that flies today With sexy English wing walkers From Clark in Bataan The same field Kurosawa flew from Yes synchronicity is here Eagle Has Landed style What does this mean now? In 2018 right now Is it the pilots' ghosts Or God or fate or karma That brought me here To Tarac Ridge to look To try to find Stone's bones? When so many have looked And failed to find him Did we really find Lt Stone? So he's no longer MIA And captive here This beautiful mountain side Where the sky and sea become one Where Bataan and Corregidor Are visible The old battlefields Where hell occurred Where there are more MIAs From both sides Both pilots hunted here And both became the prey Paying the ultimate cost Bent metal and broken bones Telling a story Their story If you listen You will hear it...

Girl Love Stars(for Kurosawa's wife)

Beauty

Gal

Stars

Plane

Wife

Sky

Love

Mountain

Nate

Sex

Together

Apart

Wait

Soon

Separated

As one

My Hayabusa girl

Japan

Pilot

Plane

Air force

Philippines

America

War sky fight on till my end!

Hold my hand

Love my heart

Gal stars wife dear

I love you always

Always always always

Stay close

Till we meet again

Gal with the stars

Happy thoughts

Hearts day dear wife

My end darkness

Never see my star girl

Again again again

I want to go home…

Dreamstate

It was the emotions within the dream

A prisoner to the situation

Images within his sleeping mind

Never to be released to the world

Like the pilots returning home

The feelings in his head

Mixed up with facts were there

But upon waking are lost

Like both aircraft were

Along with their crews

Forgotten on the high mountain side

By all but a few

He does his best to remember

And find answers

But this is hard

So he says

Let the evidence speak for itself

And then we will have the answers

But will they be the ones we need?

If the bone he briefly held was real

Then the American pilot would no longer be MIA

And answers provided

But for one person

The answers are too late

Lt Stone’s brother died

And left this world

Wes never did know the fate of his brother

At least not in this world

Are they together now

On the other side?

I actually believe so…

Warhawk and Nate

The Warhawks took off and flew upwards

Like angry hornets looking for trouble

Covering the frail old biplane

A flying camera with brave crew

Tasked to look for enemy locations

Flying here and there warplanes they were

American flown Curtiss fighters

Guarding the Filipino crewed Stearman

On a mission of war in the second global war

The Japs were ready and scrambled planes

Nates took off and headed for battle

Each side had skilled determined pilots

Men would die today and planes be wrecked

Like something from Hollywood they clashed

Vicious little snappers reeling about the sky

Rolling turning diving climbing shooting dodging

The battle went till fuel and ammo was gone

Two planes and pilots never made it back

Both fought like demons and paid the price

Each side lost a pilot and plane

They both came to grief on the same mountain