HANGING ON THE FRIDGE
- W. Bryce
Ylo mini comp may 4-22
Graffiti stain on old and faded
hitewashed brick wall, ballooned
letters dripping down its bib like
melting jelly off the baby’s chin onto
his high-chair lift-up tray, rust gathering
in streaks at its earthern base staining
the shards of grass striving to reach the sun
and Brian’s brain melts into porridge mush
as he strains so hard to reconstruct
whatever it was his life used to be,
to repair the, to fill in the…that hollow rift
left by a stray bullet from an irate shooter’s
AR-15, the bullet that caught a volunteer
soldier on a brief leave from the front line, on
a food run…picked off, like a ruffian snatching,
a pretty flower for his intended, a mere token,
by one of a marauding gang seeking pleasure
as much as loot, hogging basic supplies…
he was walking, on his way to find milk for a baby,
in yet another bombed-out city, a safe city, a saved
ciity, the mother crippled from tripping on the rubble
that was a market square, sheltering like a rabiti
in a hole…on a mercy run for milk for a baby,
In safe territory…
and that is where his memory ends
and lives…still loves…still on
that mission of mercy, his forte,
even as his body threatens to give up
like a Raggedy Andy wrung out, like a fox
hunted into exhaustion, facing extinction,
his nose sniffing the pleasant sniff of home
a few short feet from his fox hole…
and that’s where Brian lives, as a child’s
painting of him hanging on his mother’s
fridge, signed in crayon…
“Oh, the horrors of war,” his virtual widow
Laments as Brian stares out the hospital
Room window at that graffiti wounded wall,
That miserable wall suffering along with Brian,
Minds melding, phantom aches overmatching
Real ones, brains ablaze, both graffitied with
Obscene grit,
“Brian said,” the virtual widow keens, ”as he
Went off to that…obscene war, ‘I can see no
Evolution in human nature.’ ”
— —
Inspired by “I will Pess Even to Achelon,” by Amanda Newell, Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner ©2021
And because I am still incensed that last year our media apparently abandoned the Lest We Forget mantra, for I saw no tributes, save one sideways event, a flyover for one individual; no old newsreels, no ceremonies, no visits to memorials, no interviews with veterans. No reminders, even in the midst of yet another evil war…and on this D-Day anniversary, we have abandoned the front line to the people of one victim country…
Why else do we have freedom today? For one, because the D-Day battle(s) saved our world from fascist dictatorship. Complacency is a dangerous stance.
Last year, I wrote All Quiet on the News Front. Because there was no news on my television screen about this important day.
I miss the live coverage of veterans on Normandy beach, the awsome memorial towers, the air drop of poppies, the interviews, the young people laying poppies in row upon row of crosses. I miss the faces of the last surviving veterans of D Day. They inspired me.
Because there are so few of our old warriors still living is no reason to let their memories die, or the reasons we had Lest We Forget in the first place. Their work is here, in our safety and comfort. Peace is our most precious treasure, to be worn as a badge of honour, like a medal, and honour must be defended, always.
Remember the First World War, the Korean War, Vietnam, the desert war, the Second World War, the Afghanistan, the Crimea, the Ukraine…wars in peacetime; an oxymoron. An abomination.
Photo by Erik Mclean: https://www.pexels.com/photo/graffiti-art-on-the-wall-9572029/
