Tailgunner Joe
by flammeusgladius
Tailgunner Joe
Had you no decency, Tailgunner Joe?
You wouldn’t leave our commie friends alone.
You didn’t blush to hear the leftists groan
About the way you dared to fight the foe.
Why on earth did the nation need to know
Where infiltrators were? The Great Unknown
Can be a comfort in the Twilight Zone—
And truth is frequently the cause of woe.
They cut you off and pushed you out of sight
At last. Your doggedness just couldn’t shatter
Those final obstacles, nor could your light
Reach shadows duly shielded. Even sadder,
When in the end we learned that you’d been right,
The pundits sneered and said it didn’t matter.
–Tom Riley
Flammeus Gladius 
Would you mind if I recorded this for my YouTube channel at some point? I will, of course, include a link to you. If you’d like to see my other poetry recordings, they’re all here:
Be my guest!
On a related note, would you be interested in joining us for one of our poetry talks sometime? If so, I can send you a list of upcoming poems and you can see which one you’d like to discuss.
I think it might be tough for me to squeeze that participation into my Mr. Mom schedule.
Fair enough, just thought I’d throw it out there. I’m always looking for interesting guests.
“McCarthy is a former Marine. He was an amateur boxer. He’s Irish. Combine those, and you’re going to have a vigorous individual, who is not going to be pushed around.”
-J. Edgar Hoover
Just wanted to let you know that my performance of your poem should be going up this coming Monday. Also, we should be holding a discussion about the poem that Tuesday. (Although, to be honest, our discussions tend to wander pretty far afield.) Thanks again for writing this. The man deserves a national holiday. This is as much as I can do for him though.
Thanks, Zaklog!