"Memorial Day"
Memorial Day
eeny meeny miney mo
catch a tigress by the toe
my grandfather fought
in the spanish-american war
today people threw their medals
out on memorial day to protest
the lies they were told and
to tell the corporations that
people do come first before
profit, oh wily coyote
you profit-driven shape-changing mammal of now & yore, be careful to stay in the lines....
stay on your side of the road even if there is no center line and don't go to any parties
where poets pose as hipsters trying to reinvent the wheel unless it's a ferris-wheel. ferris
was a guy at RPI.
ferris had a dent in his head
from having fought in a war
so what is it good for?
absolutely nothing!
History is good for showing us how war
should be nothing or nothing to believe
when the government said we must go
to war. And today we will to remember those
who fought the good war to stop war.
hey Phil I was thinking tomorrow
after I weed the overgrown garden, I'd
take a bath & we could do our
anti-war Activity, howaboutit?
Now there's a personal place and a personal space for everything outside of this
collaborative writing on Memorial Day 2012. Having said that I'd be happy to do
an anti-war activity on the day after we were to remember war heroes.
I knew heroes who burned their draft cards
& went to jail, emerging bitter, confused
guys but this cursor just keeps
flashing......................................................................................oi
So call the yellow submarine to the rescue and put another ice-cube in your cup
the giant hummingbirds are flying in from the green mountains. It'd be good to see them
again67891011121314161718192021222324252627
characterscharactersthe 30-character line
created by the NEO formerly the alpha-smart
like names of cars that change or boats
like layers of wallpaper being painted over or perhaps where a window could appear.
remember finding the yellow window?
or renaming our boat Prometheus?
it used to be called the Philodette
those were the days, eh?
Yes, the days after war and before the days were colored coded in terms of threat alerts
but sailing on a hateful memorial day
was smooth, always 60 degrees, there
on the Philosophodette into the sunsette.
Philip Good is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts. He co-edited the last of the mimeo zines, Blue Smoke. His work can be found online with BigBridge, Exquisite Corpse, Tool and The Volta. His book UNTITLED WRITINGS FROM A MEMBER OF THE BLANK GENERATION by Trembling Pillow Press has been praised by Lisa Jarnot and Michael Gizzi.
Bernadette Mayer is the recipient of the 2014 Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. Mayer is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry, including Midwinter Day, Sonnets, The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, and Poetry State Forest. Recently published are her works,The Helens of Troy, NY, Studying Hunger Journals and Ethics of Sleep. A former director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery and co-editor of the conceptual magazine 0 to 9 with Vito Acconci, Mayer has been a key figure on the New York poetry scene for decades.