Tag: Cold War aviation

The Grandfather Who Forgot to Die

This is part 6 of 6 of Revenant Machines
A painterly landscape of a ghostly B‑52 bomber flying through storm‑lit clouds above a desolate, apocalyptic terrain. The aircraft’s silhouette fades into mist, contrails tapering into nothingness, while the horizon glows faintly with amber light against dark swirling skies.
A revenant hymn in paint: the B‑52 drifts across a ruined horizon, stitched and spectral, a guest who never leaves.

A Revenant Hymn for the B‑52

Invocation

Born when slide rules ruled.
When glass burned amber.
When men smoked in mission briefings.
When “space age” meant orbiting dogs.

Eight engines. Two decks.
A wingspan like a deficit.
And still here.
Not retired. Not reborn.
Just—re‑engined.

Ascent

A stubborn grandfather.
Stitched and re‑skinned.
Showing up to every war.
A guest who never leaves.

It is inevitable:
He will still be flying—
—when his grandchildren are rust.
—when memories are void.

Seal

The world ended.
He never heard the toll.
Still he flies—
first as a relic, now as a ghost.

The Avenging Hog

This is part 5 of 6 of Revenant Machines
Oil painting in impressionistic style showing an A-10 Warthog flying high above a battlefield. Soldiers in the foreground are silhouetted against flames and smoke, looking upward as the aircraft recedes into the sky. The muted green aircraft contrasts with the fiery orange and red background, rendered with thick, expressive brushstrokes.
A-10 Thunderbolt II, the beloved Hog, seen from the ground as it ascends through fire and smoke. Ungainly in form, absolute in function — salvation remembered in orbit.

Ungainly in the heavens,
perfect in the mire.
The angel of the grunts,
the saviour of the mudbound,
descending where supersonic seraphs cannot follow.

The Avenger, spitting its hymnal —
a litany of blessings,
a litany of curses,
each round a deliverance,
each burst a verdict,
each BRRRT a divine fart of metal and fury.

Not beautiful in form,
function absolute.
Circling —
until the circle breaks,
until the skies bristle with javelins it cannot parry,
unequipped for denial,
its hymn falters at the edge of fires it cannot answer.

Yet in the memory of mud and smoke,
its orbit remains a halo,
its voice a liturgy of salvation and wrath.
Ungainly, inappropriate, unbeautiful —
beloved.
The angel, the saviour, the Avenger.