Discount Holiday: A Memorial Day Poem

Monday, May 27, 2024

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Here’s a poem I whipped up on a whim when a discount advertisement for furniture graced my ears. Not just the one time, but the vast majority of them were sharing “the great news” about all the money that could be saved if we “come on down to the store this Memorial Day weekend”. Take it as you will and lump me in with those I wrote about because being aware is not a solution to what is wrong with our society. But it’s something and I like how the poem reads.

Discount Holiday

When did mourning those, we lost become an advertising payoff? 

Why is discount the word worshipped when lives were taken during wars and battles with no business to have happened? 

Our sins are not to be forgiven solely on the sacrifices of man we cannot even name or remember.  

But shopping comes to mind on such a day, because the screens lurking at every corner advertise: furniture and mattress sales, clothing and shoes, and food to be BBQ’d surrounded by folk just looking to get boozed. 

That urge to drink on a day like this, must be the souls floating through trying to voice, “Please remember, it was I who took those lives to save others, and ultimately face the same blunder.” 

Blood taken and blood given for today’s society to save a few dollars that are worth nothing, on items that make people feel worthy of living. 

I’m not trying to kill the celebration; I’m reminding everyone of the world we live in.  

Because though death was had, and life was removed, we as people can still look forward to discounts the screens reminded us to care more about, forgetting the real reason Memorial Day was marked as a holiday on the American calendar.