Poetry, Part Fifty-four

After I resigned and left the Air Force, periodically the news featured stories about gay witch-hunts involving several gays or lesbians in one or another branch of the service. The Norton Sound was a navy ship where an extensive investigation and several discharges occurred. Often, the military investigative organizations used a kind of psychological torture on young, impressionable service personnel. They would threaten them by various means in the hopes that they'd break down and reveal the names of others. Such techniques would then widen the investigation as well as the numbers of discharges. Those investigations fed upon themselves.

As in my case, we often became our own worst enemies--with gay people subjecting one another to humiliating exposure and discharge. If we didn't turn on one another, more of us would have spent our military careers successfully and retired. Being older and more experienced, I knew not to help them at all. Except for ruining Cadet Bostic's testimony by casting doubts upon what he said and whom he exposed, I revealed nothing about anyone else at the Academy. What Bostic had viciously started stopped with him and me.

"Norton Sound"

Compacted like trash,
as resources are altered,
even blurred in detail,
and discharged.

As memory compresses,
only the rough survive the friction.
And the concern that seems retribution
is never sympathy.

To have been done with--
dropped off and forgotten.
Who shows conscience for discards
in discarded form?

I, too, believed the smiling--
so the stealth behind went undetected.
To it are downed any who care,
and they founder.

Sirens were simply the first to sing.

We believe every day;
and we lose when we listen.
Without any protection
we hear unchallenged voices.
Not just at sea.
So subtle are these today
who trick us in officious ways.

We drown,
and others are found to replace.

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