Reflecting on Memorial Day, I went, yet again, to Arlington West. This time Santa Monica Beach, as I usually trek to the memorial in Santa Barbara. Either way, it is an immense sea of crosses by the ocean.
For those of you not familiar, both are Iraq War Memorials set up every Sunday by the Veteran's For Peace, each totaling 3000 crosses. My gratitude to them for their diligence and commitment.
Every time I go, and the closer I get, the more pain and sadness I feel. I don't personally know anyone who has died in this travesty of a war, but then again, I know them all. For they are the sons and daughters, CHILDREN, of mothers, just like myself.
You see, I have two sons, 16 and 20. My 16 year old has expressed his desire to join the Marines. It's not that I have anything against the military, per se. The structure and discipline might be just what he requires. I brought him with me this time, hoping he would realize each cross represented a child lost by a mother. He spent quite a bit of time looking at the photo board - hopefully relating each photo to a cross on the beach, a body now buried, a life tragically lost.
Wandering through the memorial never fails bringing me to tears. Most poignant, the combat boots with name, photo and sentiment attached donated by families who have lost a loved one. To realize and think an actual person will never wear those shoes again, I then truly feel the fist of sorrow squeezing my heart.
We are supposed to be blessed with our children's baby shoes as mementos - not their empty combat boots, dog tags and a thank you from our government for our child making the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
This war, and those previous, have been devised by those with power and money in the name of profit. Built upon deception, lie upon lie, until the TRUTH is but a distant memory jangling at the back of our minds. Human lives are expendable to these people.
I implore and beseech us all to seek out that truth. It is there to be found, not always easily, but there none the less. Once found, remember, "the truth is not always easy to swallow", but at least you are alive to swallow it.
I end this with my Memorial Day poem, the hope my words have touched one person's soul and my heart felt sympathy to those lives lost.
The Gulf of Tonkin
The Lusitania
Only conceived to
Produce mass mania
Pearl Harbor
Another strike
Bringing us to our knees
How can we forget
Our incarceration
Of the Japanese
9-11 one more diversion
Sucking us into
The war abyss
Not realizing the truth
We were programmed
To miss
It matters not
Who is in power
The government of the hour
What we all fail
To see is
The power of
Corporatocracy
Who makes a profit
Off of the slaughter
Of our sons and our daughters
Look beyond the non-reality
Of what we see on TV
The media is a corporate whore
Paid by the minute
Spreading their legs for more
Wake up Wake up
See the perpetuality
Of war crimes in history
Realize their dreams
Of war and hate
Learn to love
Before it's too late
