Memorial

July 2006

Memorial

By Jeff Ludlum & Scott Murphy

-Peddling down the street today I saw an American flag flying in front of the house with the forest green trim,
-A flag I've loved, I've loathed, I've honored and questioned. So much in woven into those simple stripes.
-Lots of different reasons to have that colorful cloth unfurled on the front porch today,
-An argumentative tapestry that necessitates the conversation without fear.
-And after all, what is there to fear at the end of the day?
-Much depends on your relationship to that flag, how it cloaks you or cuts you, how it shelters you body or drapes you en memorium
-Whether you know how to properly fold it, raise it, lower it, love it, or not.
-The light is on it today, but tonight the light may dim and the penalties are stiff for the unschooled,
-Punishments meted out by those who think they know best, know what's right, who rest comfortably in the shade of that colorful banner.
-The tedious balance of honoring those of our past and our present, those romantic heroes who vices have dropped away in between the pages of tattered text and PBS specials

-Muting the voice screaming inside, demanding to be heard, recognition of the crimes committed - being committed today - manipulating our warriors down a path washed in rhetoric and blood.
-Committed? A star spangled sanitarium of warriors whose mouths suckle the green teat of dollars and nonsense
-Whether the flag be red, white, blue or red and gold or black and green, or any of a hundred other variants, we have allowed the fever of nationalism and alleged common purpose spur us on.
-What would our founders say? Those who tilled soil, who struck gold, who killed Apache, signed declarations, and pondered the future
-Who found their way in the world beyond, before the glare of cameras and hum of audio tape, before the twenty-four hour news cycle, when criticism wasn't so multidimensional.
-Whose ignorance was matched by their bravery, their obstacles matched by their oblivion, whose vision, "at whatever cost" instilled into our leaders still
-Though those men today seem only to have arrogance to match the accounts they manage, the buttons they can push that would end the world.
-Not an earned privilege, but one swindled from the pockets of poverty, and fed to the hungry by an illegitimate father.
-And though many of our fore where fathers illegitimate, they seemed to have something more...respectable, maybe? back then, more honorable, beneath their dusted wigs.
-At the very least, more excusable their tainted flight. So much wealth unshared, so much potential unrealized, so many unfed, and so many clipped wings- flights unflown in the shadow of that Goddamn flag. Anger, without rationality, I know.

-But if the words written on that bleached, ancient parchment be true, anger we need harness if we're to change our course, honor the best ideas that began this great experiment.
- My own internal revolution battled, the horses turned loose and the steel hammered to unsheathed will. Harness me tonight?
-Or let me run unfettered, unguided, free to determine direction as I speed forward, regardless of who gets in the way.
A natural course, a migratory path- water unimpeded by stone walls. I will not be broken on these plains.
But will they remember me after I've crossed over, footprints long ago blown away, long a faded memory?
Or the millions of others uncelebrated for their unrealized American Dreams?
Which is probably why I tipped my riding cap to the flag flying on the porch this morning as I peddled by,
And remember I bear responsibility for that flag, for this leadership, for those failures, and these hopes that we are never done, never!