Memorial Day Poems

Remembrance Day

by Jon Fenzel

Dispossessed voices on vast crossed and starry fields,

Of Luxembourg, Brookwood, Gallipoli, Fort Vaux.

Solaced whispers mingled with tears and convulsed despair.

Final letters sealed before a slow and anxious dawn,

In Shiloh, Le Cateau, El Alamein and Iwo Jima.

Sons and daughters far from home in hushed prayer.

Shrill screams of rockets flying low to high,

Through, Guadalcanal, Inchon, Khe Sanh, Fallujah.

Terrible noise and dust, blood and tears, searing air.

Echoes of Taps voice remembrance of courage and sacrifice

At Antietam, Bastogne, Kandahar, Saratoga

Old men’s souls sit alone—silently, painfully aware.

The End and the Beginning

by Wislawa Szymborska

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Read entire poem at urbanmennonite.com

The Sacrifice Continues..

Blazing heat…sand blowing…heart pounding…not knowing

To have that kind of courage and the will to make a change

To live in a place that is distant, dry and strange

I can’t imagine being there to face my greatest fears

Leaving home and family, my comforts and my peers

God bless the men and women who do it every day

Our American heroes, the ones who lead the way

Posted on Caren Libby

Write a Personal Memoir for a Veteran who Died for our Freedom

found on The Story Woman

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the Gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the mornings hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

Author Unknown

The Story Woman says, “Write a bio-vignette to Honor our sons and daughters who have served our Great Country in the name of Freedom the World over.

by Marvin D. Wilson, The Old Silly from Free Spirit Blog

As a young boy sitting on Uncle’s lap
My mind was blown as he took me back
With tales of men of valor who
Fought with him in world war two.

Young men, scared men, hearts pounding, guts clenched-
Pushing forward on the front as comrades fell in blood drenched.

The highest prize was at stake,
Our freedom a tyrant wanted to take-
But courageous hearts of those who would be free-
Enough to lay down their lives if need be,

They fought through the terror, the horror of that war
They brought down the giant who would have made us his whore.

My Uncle told stories that no one should have to hear
Let alone to have lived them, he often said with a tear.
Many never made it back to their families and homeland
Some made it back missing arms, legs and hands.

I’ll never forget what brave souls did for me
They cried and they died so you and I could be free.

HEROE’S HAVEN

by Glenn Buttkus of Feel Free to Read

By the bus load
they rolled into Balboa,
wounded,
disemboweled,
their asses shot off,
carried roughly on taunt khaki stretchers.

Weary eyes
that wore a planet’s pain;
their heads shaved,
their underwear stenciled,
their blood spilling in little puddles
in quiet green hallways.

Cripples all,
they limped and wheeled,
hobbled and crept
through all of the limbs
of the gray octopus
military hospital;
within wire fences,
beneath post card palms,
gathering up gobs
of their old selves.

Metal and plastic and airplane glue
became tendons.
Canes, crutches, and chrome prosthetics
became new legs.
Empty pinned shirt sleeves
caught the ocean breeze
like sad May pole streamers,
flapping
a melancholy tune.

There were white jagged scars
running over the bodies of menl
ike angry dead veins,
hard to hide,
especially
those inside.

The doctors, nurses, and corpsmen
raged through the sterile wards,
and their insane anger was leveled
like a loaded rifle
at the patients.

For Christ’s sake,
the patients;
that dull thick red river of broken men;
damn goldbrick sonofabitches.
Make sure that those lazy bastards
shined their shoes,
and cut all their hair,
just scrape their heads bald;
filthy germ-ridden hair.
Geld them,
stab them,
break and slice them;
deny them comfort,
harass them,
give them pain
and then give them aspirin,
only aspirin.

They must get their minds right.
Shake them from their fitful slumber,
and stand them at attention.
They are just meat,
just
infintesimal maimed expendable insignificant
protoplasmal service numbers,
and they are not useful
when bedridden.
Those slackers must not stay.
They must go back,
back to the front…
they must.

The men and boys of pain
absorbed the anger,
heard the words,
suffered the scapel,
took the aspirin,
shined their boots,
cut and recut their hair,
stood at rigid attention,
and they did not
forget.

Glenn Buttkus 1968

HOME OF THE BRAVE

by Glenn Buttkus of Feel Free to Read

Ferns and creepers rustled softly
as a crisp breeze gently tousled
the hair of the hanging man.

Below,
in the mud,
a soldier in a foxhole
peered over the lip
and there in the moonlight
was a man on a cross
naked.

The crucified one hung there
in silent agony;
another man on a cross
seekingdown a road of sorrow
in a world of pain;
red pain,
sunset orange, yellow, and deep red.

Rusty railroad spikes in his hands,
the flesh split,
yet
he would not let loose
of life;
though it raced ahead of him
in the darkness.

The soldier had watched
for several days,
but dared not
cross to the other,
over a hundred lethal yards
of barren ground
to the death that crouched there
with the Mongols
that also waited.

Until
the silence was sliced open
with a burst of M-16 rifle fire,
and the thing on the cross
no longer quite a man,
was slashed to ribbons;
the lead searing through
his loin and chest.

The last flicker of life
rushed from him,
red-washing his limbs
and the greasy wood.

The man in the trench
felt himself tremble,
felt the tears on his dirty cheek,
as he heard the blood birds shriek
and the night became full
of their flapping.

Glenn Buttkus 1968

DAY OF THE PARIAH

by Glenn Buttkus of Feel Free to Read

Bogie and the Duke
never made a war movie together,
and that’s a damned shame;
it would have been
a proper piece of propaganda.

War
is always so clean
on the silver screen.
Explosions are intense rainbows,
tramping troops start toes tapping.
Great machines of war on wheels
and tracks of steel,
groan and roll,
clang and bang,
crushing foreign soil
and foreign devils beneath them.

Actors in pancake make-up,
carrying toy guns,
recite bellicose bullshit,
wearing the masks of heroes,
and the blood
on their hands and faces
is merely strawberry jam.

But the problem is,
in those darkened theatres
battalions of boys believed
in the ersatz brutality,
and found themselves
in Viet Nam.

The Freedom Birds,
screaming jet liners,
took them there,
and for those who survived
Tour 365,
and remained somewhat
alive,
brought them home again,
with the steaming blood
of the Orient
still clinging to their swollen lips.

Home,
to work in their Dad’s
hardware store, lumber yard or machine shop,
with the stench of the ‘Nam
still strong in their nostrils.

They remembered
how proud their fathers had been
sending them off to war;
and how,
now,
their only embrace
was stone silence.

Warriors walking
the streets
of every city in America,
hundreds of thousands of them,
with their fists clenched
and their minds still scrambled
from that Soc Trang overload.

Watching
and waiting,
year after year,
angry
clear into their bones,
with society’s spittle
dripping
down the front of their dress uniforms.

There it is.

There were no parades,
no handshakes,
no welcome home dinners,
no easy bank loans,
no talk of valor.

The calloused fact is
pain can only be withheld
for so long.

War creates warriors,
and not all of them
are willing to lay down
their weapons.

Glenn Buttkus 1979

Response to the Loyalty Oath

I copped this at Feel Free to Read (no, that's not Feel Free to Steal; always give credit to the original author and/or blogger, please. This has been a free public service announcement..;>), the blog of Glenn Buttkus, who is a genius for sifting through the annuls of literary history for the most interesting items for our continued reading pleasure, I swear! Thank you, Glenn, for providing cyberland with a fantastic repository for (most) all things prose & poetry! This piece by Jack Spicer is a brilliant discourse on the nincompoopery of loyalty oaths:

[Response to the Loyalty Oath]

by Jack Spicer

We, the Research Assistants and Teaching Assistants of the University of California, wish to register our protest against the new loyalty oath for the following reasons.

1) The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty by forcing every faculty member to sign an oath saying that he has never committed murder.

2) That such an oath is more dangerous to the liberties of the community than any number of active Communists should be obvious to any student of history. Liberty and democracy are more often overthrown by fear than by stealth. Only countries such as Russia or Spain have institutions so weak and unhealthy that they must be protected by terror.

3) Oaths and other forms of blackmail are destructive to the free working of man's intellect. Since the early Middle Ages universities have zealously guarded their intellectual freedom and have made use of its power to help create the world we know today. The oath that Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to swear is but a distant cousin to the oath we are asked to swear today, but both represent the struggle of the blind and powerful against the minds of free men.

We, who will inherit the branches of learning that one thousand years of free universities have helped to generate, are not Communists and dislike the oath for the same reason we dislike Communism. Both breed stupidity and indignity; both threaten our personal and intellectual freedom.
[c. 1949]

This letter cost Spicer his job.
Published over on the Poetry Foundation
Source: Poetry (July/August 2008).

GOLGATHA by Glenn Buttkus

GOLGATHA

I am the Christ,
he whispered,
and they laughed at him;
at his thin unshaven face,
at his long blood-caked hair.

But no one looked at his eyes
the way I did.
He could have told them,
if they would but listen.

He remembered
Antonia,
the cold castle walls
and the cockroaches that chewed his ankles.
The club and the chain,
and the many-tailed whip
that tore hunks of flesh from his body.
Roman guards that had beat him.
Thorns in his hair
tearing at his scalp.
Men who had feared him,
pummeled him with their fear,
Blackening his eyes;
those sad eyes
that could see
infinity.

Herod was fat,
and loved his whores,
and his little boys.

Pilate was lean
and he splashed his hands
in a flowered urn as the people
cheered the thief Barabbas;
placing a straw basket on his head,
and carrying him on their shoulders,
a frozen smile on his lips,
his liberty barren.

It was a dirty amemic yellow dawn
as Jerusalem reeked of refuse.
He put the rugged cross upon his shoulder;
a huge thing
that smelled of creosote and tar and pitch;
fresh cut
brought from the dark forest,
bolted together with iron clasps.

The burden was heavy
and he fell under it.
the cobblestone bit into his raw knees.
the whip kissed his scourged back
as he stood up.

The sky appeared dead.
The narrow streets were open cesspools
in the dim light,
rubbish in rainbarrols,
gutters that rannith over
with filth.
People leaned out windows
and spat,
though some did not.

Come see the parade,
it is free,
like hunger.
and the people came,
an army of shopkeepers, drunkards, farmers, artisans,whores,
pick-pockets, thieves, cutthroats, lepers,
and rabbis,
huddling, steaming, and shuffling,
as dirty children played
tag with the rats.

Another painful stumble at the corner crossroads,
flat onto the hard street,
but this time gentle hands
reached out to him
and a negro named Simon stepped up
to help shoulder the burden,
and although conscripted,
he too
was whipped and beaten
as the procession continued.

His mother was there,
somewhere,
in that sea of whirling souls,
though he had missed her at the trial.

Porta Judiciarn,
a Roman gate,
stone and ornate,
marble and impressive.

Then Calvary at noon,
a sickly place,
stinking of carrion and death;
Golgatha,
the place of skulls.
The crowd jeered and bellered and wept.
Dysmas and Gestas sweated,
watching the crosses being arranged on the ground.

The four corners of the world heaved,
black clouds raced for the hillock,
a pallid ring hid the desert sun;
noon and dark.

Pain hid the rising,
three sharp white sihouettes
against the indigo sky,
yet the iron spikes still hurt
as the flesh split, cracked, and crunched
in his hands and feet.

Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews;
words on a hand-written wooden sign,
nailed lop-sided over his drooping head.

The spikes were thick and cold,
and blood flowed,
slowly trickling down,
spiraling around his body
and the cross.
Little red rivelets of life
in a rubious world;
becoming a steaming puddle
on the bare trodden ground.

I thirst, he cried,
and they sponged his swollen face
with vinegar;
while the black sky brooded,
his crown caught the light on a barb.
Whispered words with his father,
dice that rolled,
winners that did not win.

4:00, Good Friday,
April 7th,
30 A.D.;
a scratch on eternity,
a wound that never heals,
bleeding still,
becoming words that will not clot,
from a Christ,
and from all men suffering,
and not suffering.

My God,
My God,
Why have you forsaken me ?

Glenn Buttkus Easter 1966

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm extremely pleased to be able to publish Golgatha by Glenn Buttkus of Feel Free to Read on this Good Friday. His poem is one that affects me in a profound way. I was shaken the first time I read it, and cried. I felt I was personally there while reading, witnessing the Passion of the Christ, or Stations of the Cross, if you will, as it happened back in the day that He walked the Earth, carrying the Cross He died on - for me - for All.

Drum as Love, Fear, and Prayer

This is one of my favorite poems by Sherman Alexie which resides over on one of my favorite poetry blogs, Feel Free to Read. Please do..:)

Drum as Love, Fear, and Prayer

1.

Drums
make everyone feel
like an Indian.

Drums make
everyone feel
like an Indian.

Drums make everyone
feel
like an Indian

Drums make everyone feel
like an Indian.

Drums make everyone feel like
an Indian.

Drums make everyone feel like an Indian.

2.

I have more faith
in drums

than I have in the people
who play them

I told her
and she said God

is a drum.
I have more faith

in a small drum
because I can carry it

everywhere I go
I told her

and she said God
is the smallest drum.

3.

She said, dance.

It is crazy, I know, how quickly I've learned to love
this dancing, this step-step across the floor

when I'd spent my whole life
without any music. I had promised never to dance

in the white way
if I didn't dance in the Indian way first

but she said dance
refuses color when we are broken down

and embraces color when we are built again
and I believed her

and danced when I heard the drums, the drums
the drums in her voice.

4.

If love is taken
in its smallest part
will there still be enough
to frighten me? Yes

and no. I mean, if love can be
reduced to a cut bead
then I am not afraid.
But if that cut bead is sewn

into a moccasin or purse, if
that bead is part of a chain
built larger and larger, bead
by bead, then I am afraid.

Here, she said, take this bead
with honor. Then she offered another.

5.

And if I choose to love
this Indian woman
partly because she's Indian

(drum)

and if I choose to love
this Indian woman
mostly because she's Indian

(drum)

then who are you to stop
this love between
and Indian woman and man

(drum)

and who am I, who is she, now
for both of us to make these decisions together?

6.

I have broken
bread with her.

We have prayed together in silent places
where we could hear each other breathe
and in airports and lunchtime restaurants
where nothing wanted to rise above it all

except a few lonely people
with their cigarette smoke.

These prayers have not been easy, how
do we say Indian prayers in English
and which God will answer? Is God red
or white? Do these confused prayers mean

we'll live on another reservation
in that country called Heaven?

7.

Then she tells me Jesus is
still here
because Jesus was
once here

and part of Jesus are
still floating in the air.
She tells me Jesus' DNA is
part of the collective DNA.

She tells me we are all part
of Jesus, we are all Jesus
in part. She tells me to breathe deep
during all our storms

because you can sometimes taste Jesus
in a good hard rain.

8.

And I want to say this (say it)
and I want to whisper (shout)
and I want to shake the doors of the house (church)
and I want to blow a trumpet (play a drum)

and I want to run (dance)
and I want to talk about laughter (pain)
and I want to count up all the losses (magic)
and I want to blow a trumpet (play a drum)

and I want to inventory my fears (joy)
and I want to hide beneath old blankets (grace)
and I want to feast (pray)
and I want to blow a trumpet (play a drum)

and I want
to play a drum.

9.

She danced alone
before she ever knew me

and she'll dance alone
though she loves me

but for now
she dances

with me.
I take her hand.

No.
I take her face

in my hands
and I tell her

how much I believe
in her, in her.







Sherman Alexie..........from The Summer of Black Widows
Photo courtesy of Standing Bear's Manataka Weddings

Stupid war makes for "Four Buck Gas" by Glenn Buttkus

Taking one of Rick Mobbs awesome paintings (yes I am a big fan of Rick Mobbs work!) with a little help (horse's red leg) from his son, Broadus, entitled , Stupid War, Glenn Buttkus co-author of Feel Free to Read blog, wrote the following poem, Four Buck Gas. It's long. Too bad. Excellent poetry comes in long - as well as short and medium. heh heh. Long is good. I know. How do I know? you might be asking. Glenn Buttkus tends to write lengthy poems; you see, he has an eye for detail that can analyze any subject down to a, ah - a gnat's eyeball! Yeah! That's it. Furthermore - this particular poem is an excellent example of my premise that poets are the true historians. But that's not all...Glenn also writes movie reviews that rock. He includes so much information that by the time you've read the review, you might feel like you just saw the movie! Yup, that good. This is also the way he treats poetry. If Glenn likes what you've written, he'll tell you exactly why; pulling every nuance, hidden meaning, psychological undertone, and any literary reference alluded to in the imagery that he can hunt down. He'll weave a beautiful and carefully written essay about your poem/movie/writing or pack a novella of a concise review down to critical mass thumbnail size that makes you feel like the most important poet that's hit the scene! Make sure you take a jet to his blog. You will find a fascinating & fantastic potpourri of miscellaneous literary extracts. And now, without further ado, here's Glenn Buttkus on four buck gas!

Four Buck Gas

This morning
I stood in the pre-dawn chill
and pumped 4-buck gas
into my pick up.

Suddenly consumed
with unspeakable anger,
I shook my free fist
at the Shell sign—
standing there tall
and sullen
and silent,
arrogantly golden
flashing
its $4.15
for regular gas
message.

I thought about
The Bush War
and what it is costing
us/me,
and about the fat cat
oil barons
who hang out with Junior
swilling Lone Star
and counting their tax-free
trillions.

The New Millennium Crusades
suddenly swam belligerently
into my cortical net,
witnessing Bush stir up
the Muslim wasp nest,
sending our youth
into harm’s way
to face the barbs and stingers,
RPG’s, roadside explosions,
and suicide bombers
who themselves
are barely old enough
to enjoy
the promised 100 virgins
in Jihad Paradise.

A few yesterdays ago
there we were
post 9-11 in 2003,
wanting to strike back,
wanting revenge
for the terrible toppling of our towers,
and the callous crushing
of the innocent thousands,
as death was brought to us
on our own silver wings,
diving and plunging
straight down,
laden with high-pitched screams
from jet engines pushed to full throttle
and passengers hoarse from fear.

Something had to be done.
Who could we punish?
Who could we kill
to satiate our blood lust?
George W. Bush, Jr.
and all his father’s posse
smiled like hyenas
in a silent pack,
and their greedy index fingers
pointed back,
straight at Iraq;
telling us repeatedly
that right there was the heart
of darkness,
the den of murderers,
the scourge of the earth;
plotters, terrorists, and enemies—
that Bush was ready
to lead us
into a holy war
that would finish the job
left undone by his daddy
in 1991—
that as righteous patriots
we should take on
the rag tag Republican Army
and run that ruthless fox,
Saddam Hussein,
to ground;
for he was a madman,
an abuser of human rights,
a killer,
a dictator,
a womanizer,
a sodomizer;
and not only
did he absolutely possess
weapons of mass destruction,
but he fully intended
to send unmanned squadrons
of drones
to our eastern shores,
that were fully laden
with biological germ warfare payloads.

75 senators were duped, cajoled,
and convinced,
thus launching
Operation Iraqi Liberation;
soon to morph into
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

During the one month assault,
we overran Hussein’s finest troops
like shooting coyotes
from horseback,
and it only cost us
139 American lives.
“Outstanding!”
was on the commander’s lips,
followed by,
“Let’s stick around a while now,
and assist the Iraqis into forging
a Democracy.”

We all recall
the smirking grin
and lying eyes
of warmonger
Donald Rumsfeld;
and that late afternoon
five years ago this May
on the USS Abraham Lincoln,
when Commander in Chief,
President Bush
emerged from a fighter
wearing a flight suit,
stood spread-legged on the naked steel deck,
waving his thunder bolt helmet
and declaring,
“Mission Accomplished!”

And presently
here we are,
knee deep in Year 5,
fighting “asymmetric warfare”,
without front lines,
against a faceless enemy
that hides in
and melts into
the civilian population;
just like before
in 1964—
except now we are immersed in
and surrounded by
civil war and insurgency,
as we are being branded
the Occupying Force,
once again;
spilling blood for greed
and democracy—
being taught hard lessons;
like we cannot curtail
the flow of Jihad insurgents
by cutting the head off the Hydra,
or its whelps,
or its lieutenants—
for new warriors
spring like cockroaches from the shadows,
craving to join the resistance
to the Infidels and Capitalists,
arriving in dark clumps daily,
like monsters rising out of the blood-soaked
waters of the Tigris and Euphrates—
making us pay
every day
for patrolling
the Sunni Triangle.

Oh God,
when will the madness end?
How much black gold
has to be pumped
into profit
from the Iraqi
fat oil reserves?
How many more
retired Special Forces
will have to be recruited
by Blackwater
to protect Bush’s
real agenda?

The numbers for Y5
are staggering!
U.S. dead: 4,079.
U.S. wounded: 30,000.
Contractors dead: 1,028.
Contractors wounded: 10,569.
Iraqi death toll: 1,000,000.
Iraqi combatants dead: 10,800.
Insurgents dead: 22,807.
Detainees: 43,000.

Like in the 60’s
when the carnage
in Viet Nam
was broadcast to us daily,
splashing red and futile
on our living room television screens—
today
our forced occupancy
of Iraq
is beamed immediately by satellite
to every home,
for all of us to see
and cringe
as the pride of our loins
are kicking down doors
and pumping hot lead
from their Mossberg shotguns
into the Islamic populous—
are being ambushed
around every corner,
green zone or not;
witnessing the riddling
of those poorly armored Humvees,
those High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles,
with bullets bought in black markets,
originally manufactured by us
and sent to Saddam
when it was his job
to fight the Iranians
for us.

Our young men
and women,
do their duty,
without hesitation,
becoming hard-hearted
and stone-jawed—
even though many of them
may be stop-lossed
or extended
by their loving government
to stay
in the fray;
professional targets,
standing atop
an M1 Abrams battle tank,
or racing down some dangerous narrow alley
in their M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle,
or screetching through those
mean Moslem streets in Strykers—
the dead brown skies above
choked
with Apaches, Kiowa Warriors, Black Hawks, and Chinooks—
the dirty twilight punctuated
by the deep throb
of dozens
of .50 caliber lethal heavy machine guns—
patrols partially protected
by howling M249 SAWS.

Yes, Lord,
we see it all;
and feel overwhelmed
with intense grief and anguish
as this cavalcade of cavalry and contractors
are at this very moment
toiling in the acrid white dust
of the Middle East,
providing the opportunity
for the petroleum bullies
to force me
to have to pump their goddamn
4 buck gas,
and shake my inept fist
at a stupid sea shell,
and snarl terribly
at those barons unseen,
but most certainly
felt.

Glenn Buttkus June 2008