Against Memorial Day

By Terry Lodge

I grew up on Memorial Days.
It was always beautiful spring weather.

My father made floral arrangements
For us to leave at the gravesites of friends and relatives.
Some had died in war.
I remember watching the tears form in his eyes
As he recalled what he, himself, survived in the South Pacific
Choking up in mid-sentence.

And there were 21 gun salutes
And that wretched poem
‘We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.’

I’m against Memorial Day!
‘Short days ago we lived
And now we lie in Flanders fields??’
The Earth should vomit up that shame!

Those millions of boneboxes
Swept along on the rising tide
Of hundreds of millions of gallons of blood
Spilled for what?
To hold up the Torch?

That Torch has immolated billions of dreams
Millions of hearts swollen with love
Millions of pounds of brains
From which personal inclination
To oppose My Lai
Napalm
Drone bombings
War profiteers
Drone murders
False patriotism
Torture
Global ecocide
The military-industrial-genocide complex
Dead collaterals
Racism
And to love poetry,
Had to be erased
By war as the health of the State.

Tell me when we wage class warfare
To end warfare
On Fallujah
Caracas
Youngstown
Kandahar
Detroit
Somalia
Lake Erie
Grant Township
Tehran
New Orleans
Gaza
Appalachia
Aleppo
Thacker Pass.

Tell me when we wage class warfare
To end warfare.

Abolish the dying class;
Curse the lie of Memorial Day.