Michelle Hurst Pell writes

Memorial Day—Jimmy Seigfried 

I might be crazy. 

I sat in my car the other day outside of school 

And tried to think of just one thing 

That inspired me. 

Just one.

Jimmy Seigfried’s dead. 

Dead in Vietnam fifty years ago. 

Oh, his body came home 

And lived and breathed in Liberty 

For another forty years 

Floating down a river of Jack Daniels 

Through a constant haze of weed 

His mother wouldn’t touch him when he slept. 

The first time she tried, he woke with his hands around her throat.

But now Jimmy Seigfried is really dead. 

He didn’t get a Purple Heart, but the war killed him, nonetheless. 

And so is Grandpa who came home from Belleau Woods 

A proud Marine 

With a wooden leg. 

Will has a titanium face and demon dreams

Souvenirs from Fallujah 

He’s come home to wage war with the VA 

And all those young men who chanted 
“Hell no, we won’t go” 

And got trust-fund college boy exemptions 

While they protested the war 

And preached peace and love (and free sex, of course) 

Retire on their fat-ass CEO millions. 

Ah, so much for idealism. 

While we’re happy as hell to go to Walmart in our pajamas 

And hear what the superstars are doing 

And slip on our headphones 

And tweet our 1,423 closest friends 

And smoke our legalized weed 

(Thank god we don’t have to smoke it out of gun barrels, anymore) 

And argue the glories of the SECOND AMENDMENT 

Let freedom ring 

And Jimmy Seigfried is still dead.

 

 Waiting for Henry Kissenger -- Charlie Shobe