ALONG THE MEKING AGAIN

Along the banks of the Meking
I fought my last Alamo again.
And this time we really kicked ass
and took names and sapped Charlie!
Of course, if the enemy didn’t run
out of bullets and men,
we wouldn’t have had time
to count all our dead
and survive to tell the tale
that this last Alamo
had been a victory.

I now walk the banks of America
along the sewage shores of the Mississippi
and the sanitized beaches of California,
and I am counting all the Alamos
I never fought and never won
and all the high school warriors
and corporate heroes and beach bums
who have nothing more important to count
than the lazy comfort of inherited freedom.
But the dead are counting flowers
and the crippled are counting limbs,
and the survivors are counting graves
and I’m counting the memories
of all the Alamos I never won.

They are memories of the Meking
buried in rivers of blood
and of victories
America has no right to remember.

By: Patrick P. Stafford