A Poem As Memorial

Shimmy shimmy coco bop shimmy shimmy bop (ahh)
Shimmy shimmy coco bop shimmy shimmy bop(ahh)
Sittin´ in a native hut
All alone & blue
Sittin´ in a native hut
Wonderin´ what to do
Along came a native girl
Did a native dance
It was like a Paradise
Put me in a trance
Goin´ Shimmy shimmy coco bop
shimmy shimmy bop
Shimmy shimmy coco bop
shimmy shimmy bop
(Lyrics by Little Anthony and the Imperials)

This poem
Such as it is
Is meant to be
A memorial
Yes, a memorial
To all the heroes
Of my generation
And of every generation
Who ever had the courage
And the balls
To say NO to war!
To all those of my generation
And of every generation
Who ever had the courage to shout
HELL NO WE WON’T GO
To the five star generals
Who wanted to recruit
All of us twenty some things
To be cannon fodder for war
All the five star generals
Who wanted us to go off to war
And die in the rice paddies
Of some of the poorest
Peoples on earth
To burn their hootches
And kill their families
And yes babies too
And yes babies too
In the name of freedom
And of equal death for all
In the name of patriotic duty
In the name of the father
And the son
And the Holy Ghost
To crucify humanity
In the name of expanding global markets
Eminent domain
Blood for oil
Death for the sake of death
To test new weapons
On new battlefields
To make the Pentagon proud
Because all real Americans
Love the sting of battle
Said Old Blood and Guts
(Yeah, his guts, our blood!)
All hail the conquering hero
Does even Kilroy
Know if we were ever there
Millions of corpses
Strewn over millions of battlefields
Yet we cannot consecrate
Nor can we hallow this ground
So that these brave souls
Shall not have died in vain
So that some tired old ideas
Will not have died an untimely death
Nor have perished from the face of the earth
Because that’s how the powers that be
Wanted it to be
So it’s off to Baghdad
And Afghanistan
In search of non existent
Reasons for war
For who needs reasons any more
If you ain’t with us
Are you against us
Hearts and minds
Winning the high moral ground
Before the Tet New Year Celebrations
Blew all of the neatly packaged lies to hell
Because of all the cities
we had to destroy
In order to save them
To secure the pipelines of rage
Flowing from every madras
And peasant village
In provinces so far and so distant
That they are untouched by human civilization
Untouched by time, or history itself
From pipelines to the pipe bombs
Scarring the countryside
And on the internet
With precise illustrated instructions
For suicide bombers
In the name of the merciful
And magnanimous
Slow to anger
With equal injustice for all

This poem
Such as it is
Is meant to be
A memorial
Yes, a memorial
To all the heroes
Of my generation
And of every generation
Who have ever had the courage
And the balls
To say NO to war!

As a memorial
This poem may not stand the test of time
But for the moment
Because the moment is all
That we will ever have
This poem will simply have to do
Until something better comes along.

Goin´ Shimmy shimmy coco bop
shimmy shimmy bop
Shimmy shimmy coco bop
shimmy shimmy bop

jack h. markowitz
Philadelphia, 2011