Join us every Monday night for drinks at the Daily Kos community political poetry club
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional
The keypad is mightier than the sword
Some poems for Memorial Day and a brilliant song from the Pogues which, to me, embodies the price we ordinary mortals pay for the hogs to continue feeding at the trough.
Pleasant Hill
His shaded eyes stare at me
As he sits erect in his Union uniform
Slicked back black hair
Chin and mouth set firm
Already at eighteen years
A survivor of famine
Passage on a coffin ship
Orphanage and a trek across
Half a land. Edward.
How did he end inside this frame
Watching me pass by each day
As I grow towards and then beyond
The age of life that he never saw?
Was it ferverous love of country?
Did some Great Man stand one night
Surrounded by torches thundering
Of Justice and The Wrath of the Lord?
Was he promised an engraven parchment
To wave in the face of those who would
vouchsafe his claim to be an American?
Did some maiden with eyes
Of unfinished chalcedony
Pledge fealty to love contingent
upon mastered deeds Argival?
Or as of the age he was
Did he yearn to move away
Away from quiet homestead's light
To feel his feet moving forward
Towards yet unknown adventure?
His firmset mouth never opens
To reveal how he came to find
Himself holding the hand of Death
So far away from home on a field
Filled with fire and screaming.
There is no mourning wife
To speak in reverent tones
Passing the memory of their father
To children who never know him.
Just one brother broken
By his own wounds but
Lingering on for half an age
Long enough to build a legacy
Of flesh and land and money
Only to taste bitter almonds in the end.
His shattered bones molder
Buried with his boon companions
Who shared fire food thoughts
While wondering and wandering
into the bonecrushing maw
Which macerated them together
into the anonymous excrement
Of a communal mass grave.
Brought there by greed and folly
The desire of covetous merchants
To steal by dint of steel
Unnumbered multitudes of
Alabastrine thready plants plucked with
Blooded resolve by human chattel.
Left abandoned at battle's peak
A drunken general leaving unspoken
The movement of a mere whisper of army
To stand beside them and hold the line.
Left abandoned after death
Victory claimed yet field relinquished
Given the short shrift due those
At the mercy of inimical strangers.
Left abandoned with embarrassment
By conqueror's history passing over
Fruitless endeavors stained by cowardice.
To the day one year after
Bobby Lee dismounts Traveler
Sits at a marble table and signs away
Any last hope of two nations
Both equal yet one unequal.
As he stares out at me
Eyes shaded to acknowledge
Death upon contested bloody ground
He knows only of that moment
In which the daguerreotypist
Bids him to sit still and strong.
Aravir 2012
The Veteran
Breathe the hostile air
Nostrils sting from stench
Of powder
And of the ripening dead
Walk with men of impulse
Strike at moving shadows
Of the enemy not seen
Not to sleep in dreaded darkness
Or with naked dead in daylight
And hateful eyes survey them
As they walk through smoke filled streets
Boys exchanged for angry men
As a bargain struck in hell
Bring them home to flowers
Flags and anthems braying
A myth of fantasy
As rich men ride beside them stealing
The seething rage inside them
Parades in shining sun
As the Day Begins
Hazy landscape deep green
Atmospheric dew, wet
Muffled, early morning
Awakening
Red sun below the horizon
Angers nimbus into white
Birds unheeded sing warning songs
Storms past and future
Projectile finds
My sleeping son at the riverbank
To sleep forever in the mud
Bullfrogs that knew him as a boy
Not threatened by a cold hand
Invite him to play again
rightiswrong 2003-2004
Today let us remember
Those who gave everything
Today is no time
For political division
All blood is red
All tears are blue
Every death
Diminishes
Every one of us
CJ Campbell Memorial Day 2012
Pogues: The Band Played Waltzing Matilda: