Photo Credit: Kerry Ann Couch
I was looking through old writing tonight and found this poem from long ago. It wasn’t too long after the events of Septemeber 11th, 2001. The unity of us as a wounded was being weaponized and we were on the precipice of war… again.
I was just twenty-one back then, in a very safe corner of the peace movement, reading my poems over guitar music in the bar, largely to friends and family in my home town. From the vantage point of nearly two decades, I think about what little I did to stop the unstoppable. But on those nights of reading this poem, as fiery as I could, to a room full of people that shared the same sense of sorrow, dread, and inevitability, it felt like I was doing… something.
The most troubling thing that I feel when I read this poem that I’d all but forgotten, is that the state of the world has only gotten darker and more complicated in its darkness. As such, it seems that it’s even more important to do everything we can to stop that which seems unstoppable.
May we all remember that the struggle continues and that we are not alone.
Also, time has a way of showing us all of our shortcomings. Nowhere is it more pronounced than for writers, because the past is right there in black and white. There can be no idealization of it retold in better light. If I were writing this poem today, it wouldn’t focus exclusively on male experiences of war and nationalism. While it draws out of men across the generations of my own family, there were also women in my family who experienced the same times in ways that were significant. There are infinite layers that belong here because there are as many experiences of the same flag that tries and fails over and over to define a common experience across every possible division. So I see that my shortcomings are as prevalent as the flag’s shortcomings. As such, I’ve only corrected spelling and grammar. As the content goes, Quod scripsi, scripsi.
-ckm 10/02/2019
The old man walks out to the long-standing pole
holding a star-spangled triangle under his arm.
Dedication to a perfect origami fold shows.
As he mounts it on the rope he remembers brothers who died.
Their lives were laid down in love.
As the flag reaches its lofty destination
the old man’s heart moves to his fingertips
and they raise to his brow
which harbors an eye
that harbors a tear
that harbors the memory
of fighting the good fight.
He is not alone.
The middle-aged man in sadness unfolds the flag
from the midsection of the daily news.
The flag faces out.
An advertisement faces in.
With scotch tape he posts it on the window of the American dream.
He works hard.
He remembers brothers who died.
Their lives were laid down in dedication.
A lump in his throat chokes him in memory
of the sense of duty in which lives were shattered
in mortars and homecomings.
Pain swells in his abdomen in the memory of the
question “is this the good fight?”
He is not alone.
The young man curses the flag.
Made in China? Made for less.
He curses the flag that left him with a father
who didn’t feel fit to be in his life.
He had felt like a warrior who fought for what he thought was right,
then knew it was wrong.
The young man curses the flag that fills his people
with patriotism that takes form as God’s wrathful army.
His God does not clap in response to nonsense about evil
and an impossible war on “Terra!”
His God is supposed to be merciful and loving.
He curses the flag that has the Windows 2000 dialect of “Remember the Alamo!” “Remember Pearl Harbor!”
He remembers the trail of tears.
He remembers Hiroshima.
He remembers Nagasaki.
He remembers Dresden.
He remembers Agent Orange and napalm.
He remembers fallout sickness.
He remembers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
He remembers fatherlessness.
He thinks of brothers who will die.
He curses “Old Glory.”
He still loves his country.
He is not alone.
01/30/2002