I remember the dead not food or roller coasters.

THEIR FIRST TASTE OF LIFE

We tended to remember
because we have headstones,

too many to be counted.

Some remember the unfound
yet lying in unmarked graves.

We think of their death
as the pinnacle of life,
of service to the nation.

We rarely count the spouses never married,
the children never born,
the parents given a golden star to display.

 It is mostly the young we send off, their first taste of life

found in both battle and the boredom between the fights.

Most in war did not die for ideals or principles
far above their meager pay grade; not for emblems,

pins, or reward but for the one fighting next to them.

No soldier ever hoped for a grave stone, no sailor a watery grave,

though if they were given such remember them for the sacrifice made.

Today I will not receive any medals for my cooking skills,

my county fair pin knocking knack , ability to dunk a clown
my waving a flag used as advertising most days of the year.

War was a ghastly costly effort of blood spilled in mud or frozen ground,

now I wonder do we count it a win as we see industrial profits roll in?

© M Durfee

5/28/18


photo is Pearl harbor military cemetery US gov. stock

THINKING ABOUT THINGS---IN RHYME

I’M NOT ON MY OWN ALONE

The threat is all inside his head they said taking him away in restraints to places everyone dreads inside their head. Who after all wants to go to rooms where there are no floors and the only thing certain is the fall through open doors, away from grace, from places out into the furthest darkest coldest places of space that only mathematicians can explain in languages known only to them; them and their theories calculated but undemonstrated.

Swimming in oceans drowning seems like a dream to him now, but the visions of the ifs and the maybes surrounding those night stalkers, moon walkers, picture talkers long dead known only by the pigments left imprinted in the biology of his head. Where are they taking him but to places only the “pay me” Houdini spiritualists say they can answer for him and me; for a fifty dollar fifteen minute half hour.

Living in love is a question to an answer that every dancer knows is possible as long as the music plays on in tunes containing rhythms, riffs and codas that never stop; for motion depends on the love and love relies on music more than any man can know, not that many care anymore as long as there is lust, love is an orgasm.

He wondered, in his deep space restraints, always and forever he was ignorant of man’s ways to say humans needed rules for war? As if it is game someone pondered and decided that killing had legitimate legalized directions. Move the pieces this way and it okay and move them that way to make the game go astray into areas where the loss of life is all wrong. It is not a game but most are willing to play anyway. As long as they are not on the losing side. Not taking that dirt nap, loser’s ride.

He ponders who decides which tribes live and which die legally. He knew that he could free a land but never a mind, he is retrained in restraints so it must be you who takes the thoughts to places where pens are set up for writing declarations of emancipations of thoughts turned away from hate and hells always ever present state of rules for war and every other despicable thing he knew grew from the garden after it’s earth was sucked dry of every clean nutrient.

That is his only known truth; having done what he could do, now you either quit or join it’s also up to you.

© M Durfee

9/6/14

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EVERY CONFLICT ON THE GLOBE? NOTHING.

BETTER A FREE MONKEY THAN A PET GORILLA
If a person loses there mind every time

they bash against an immovable wall,

not only would their head be flat and small,

their mind may start to think about

why walls are built in the first place,

why they grow higher, deeper and never shrink

and what it’s actually like to be a zoo keeper.

© M Durfee

8.19.2014