We'll he finally did it.

The latest milestone for a country at war came last Friday without commemoration. It came without the real knowledge of who was the 2,974th to die in conflict, because it wasn't one death on that day, or two.. or.. fifteen.

The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But George W. Bush, started a war that has killed the 2974 military personnel. Not being happy with that, he managed to also maimed and wound another 18,000 or so. For the most part we accept the wounded as the cracked furniture in our suburban homes we can't part with or figure out how to fix. So we pretend they aren't really bruised or dented with stories about their former glory. The Iraqi and Afghani dead, are referred to as collateral damage, as if they were the savings account or asset we could draw down on, to repay for the American dead. But we already know George Bush flunked Economics 101.

A few months back, I wrote a poem about this whole situation. It seems as good a time as any to roll it out.
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On Sunday mornings, George Stephanopoulos does the soldiers “In Memoriam”

I study the names,
attending to the towns they are from.
Hoping most are from cities.
--big ones.
Because,
by convention of opinion,
a dead soldier from a big city,
is less crippling.

--Really,
the denominator of the whole is bigger,
they can pass in vagueness of the divisor.

The city won’t know who the soldier fucked.
Only,
That, at this time,
a soldier has been fucked.
And the prodigy of that fucking is an urn,
spilling ashes across a newspaper.

--Ashes to be bushed aside from formal blues,
As the city’s coughs during the tapping march of
earning,
buying,
and telling everyone,
“I’m the same cardboard you are.”

Soldier’s dieing from small towns,
Burn those uniforms.
Their dust chokes the lungs,
Stopping the whole fraction,
To catch breath,
in a parade,
to distract from our chronic asthma.