NP The Dragon Over Hackensack

[Tim Strzechowski]

Apologies if this has been posted before.  I stumbled onto it this weekend in a poetry anthology.

Tim
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"The Dragon Over Hackensack"

Unexpectedly a red dragon appeared over Hackensack NJ
   One late winter afternoon.
Two F-104s of the New Jersey Air National Guard scrambled to
   meet it.

In a move surprising to some observers,
   Though not all,
The dragon breathed a stream of fire . . .
That completely missed the planes
   But incinerated: an empty wooden water tower on the Bijou,
                           a billboard that used to blow smoke rings,
                           and the ABC Action-Cam hot air balloon.

One F-104 attacked with 105mm cannon,
The other with Sidewinder heat-seeking missles.

Of course, the cannon shells bounced off of the dragon's scales.
The Sidewinders missed and eventually fell to earth in the
   Great Swamp, just missed a deer on the runway of
   Morristown Airport.

The dragon, fluttered or annoyed by all this attention,
Reversed course and flew off
Out of sight
In the direction of Long Island,
Pausing only to eat the top 50 feet
Off the leftmost of the two World Trade Center Towers.

The Pentagon ignored the report on the incident.

                           --- Richard L. Wexelblat, 1985


"In 1965, Richard L. Wexelblat was the first candidate in a computer science program to complete a dissertation. Many doctoral candidates had performed computer-related work, but Wexelblat's diploma, presented on December 5 by the University of Pennsylvania--the home of ENIAC--was the first to carry the designation "computer science." 
http://www.computer.org/history/looking/rz0008.htm


WEXELBLAT, RICHARD L. 
  a.. * The Dragon Over Hackensack, (pm) Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. Marvin Kaye, SFBC, 1985 
http://www.locusmag.com/index/s791.html

http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/inv/hopl19.htm

http://pauillac.inria.fr/SIGPLAN/notices/




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"Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise."
                                 ~~ J.R.R. Tolkien
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