Memorial Day -rejj ©

I don’t want to remember,
don’t want to wear yellow ribbons,
won’t sing a word,
can’t pledge my allegiance to a flag
for which so many are murdered.
The silence is fraught with them,
thick with the ghosts of boots marching
down the path to infinite.
Soldiers assuming their position
in graves evenly spaced and tight
marked with miles of white crosses
like rows of teeth in a mouth
that will never wake to speak.
So we stand in the silence,
the void of joyless peace
and remember
what can’t be relegated
to six inches of newsprint
or a CNN special,
a color photo, a flag, a grave,
a color photo, a flag, a grave,
a color photo, a flag, a grave,
another moment of silence
to mask the unspoken truth,
that we won’t remember,
that we never remember,
that the repetition is our only memory
and our wars continue
like a TV blaring in the next room,
but no one is watching.
And we are silent.