I wish that instead of wiring plastic flowers
into perpetual wreaths of forgetting
that the Walmarts and the Del Montes and all the international
flag flying perpetrators of poverty
and otherness
would weave a memorial to the fragility
of truth
and love
that made the ever proud US see
we really are all in it together.

and no one would have to spend again the final part of May
re-membering
a broken patriotism and personal honor tarnished with the shame of witnessed genocides, complicity in torture
and laws supporting racial profiling and religious persecution

and no one would have to spend a single day
re-membering their family
trying to make whole again
a heart
while wondering what it was to have a spouse
a parent
a partner
above the ground
instead of wreaths to hang.

I wish I could re-member
what witnessing violence breaks
I wish I could re-member
the bodies without limbs
the famies with only a body
but what I can’t re-member
I instead honor today and wonder
when will we ever learn..
when will we ever learn,

There may be those who read my words and call me out as enemy within;
to them I say,
I served
I saw
I stayed behind while a son served
and I see his shrapneled soul.

But we are still lucky
our breaks are all inside
and we still breath and eat and sleep
and work and play.

to those who did not return
to those who returned too broken to love
and especially to those who live the dis-membered lives
these lost and fallen men left behind

I send prayers and gratitude
and hope a few more people join me in hanging garlands of forgiveness
and compassion in May.
Honor our fallen with forgiveness on the freeway, at the long line coffee checkout
instead of plastic flowers on a grave.

Plant love and understanding
Honor the sacrifice but memorialize Peace.