Memorial Day – 2024... origin of holiday

Strong and brave men and women
gave their level best

crème de la crème

strongest and bravest
leaving grieving significant others

with emotional agony

within treasured chest

o'er the redoubt

the enemy did crest,
where lovely bones

of forebears for everest

 

battling hostility over

well fought over ass strew turf

among warring factions finessed

in manicured cemeteries
(sacred burial grounds) ye guessed

dead bodies strewn across killing fields

forsook their lives eternal peace they rest
honored and revered succumbed mortal
electric kool-aid acid test
though I question if sacrificed life

worth a spit of land to wrest.

Now pardon ma faux pas
indicative of generic geek

a reasonable rhyme rhyme,
from dis po' pa try'n to be sleek
original poem crafted years gone by

necessitated minor tweak

where sense and sensibility weak.

 

Officially called Decoration Day

proclaimed on 5 May 1868

by General John Logan

first observed on 30 May 1868

Waterloo N.Y. officially

declared the birthplace

by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966.

 

Though eight score minus one year

(minor emendation regarding time frame
since original date I crafted poem)
Appomattox, a psychological balm

helped stitch frayed nation to calm
until hell on earth
killed, obliterated, and rained napalm,
(a portmanteau of two

of the constituents

of the original thickening

and gelling agents:

coprecipitated aluminium salts

of naphthenic acid

and palmitic acid)

served as silent psalm

since bombardment at Fort Sumter qualm
including intervening wars
such as raging battles on the Somme
and the war between
Northern and Southern Vietnam.

 

National holiday most adept

at uniting Civil War fallen soldiers
when fiercely armed as brother in arms crept

against opposing forces, which took
by surprise “enemies” or found inept

ill prepared troops with surprise mortal
blow which ambushed attackers leapt

mowing down valiant soldiers, thus
becoming slain grooms who eternally slept

sorrowful lamentable hymns from
widowed brides tears wept.

 

Cease fire that day

terminating internecine flay

o’er mounds of earth whence
bones o boys donned blue or gray

a day of remembrance for those
who died in our nation's service lay

celebrated this last Monday every May

one must know tis not about division

boot about reconciliation
and sacrifice brave heroes did pay,

the price of their lives for granted
freedoms enjoyed as american lee-way.

 

Forsooth, now we cherish too, the Poppy red
that grows on fields where valor led,
it seems to signal to the skies
that blood of heroes never dies
acknowledged courtesy bunting
(strings of colorful, monochrome,

beige triangular flags and lengths

of fabric in the colors of national flags

gathered and draped into swags

or pleated into fan shapes)
visibly draped and/or hung
honoring the dead.