A Memorial Day Poem

 Inspired by Sigfried Sassoon’s Suicide in the Trenches

and Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War

I knew a simple Texas boy

who grinned at life in artless joy.

He dreamt each night of battles past

and leapt when Duty called at last.

Fallujah streets — debris and dirt

and scraps of flesh and sounds that hurt —

made not a man, but mindless fiend

that shot a cat and then itself.

Support our troops: never forget

that Lives are saved if we just let

ourselves remember him before

we dare to dignify a war.