My Name is Steven Simms (And Like Stephen Crane, I’m Against War)

Bloganuary writing promptWrite about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc. View all responses

All my life I’ve been called by my middle name Steven (actually I’ve been called Steve). So, in my mind my first name is Steve and the name that proceeds it just confuses people.

This morning thinking about the Russian/Ukraine and Israeli/Hamas wars inspired me to write a poem about another Stephen:

Stephen Crane
Was an American soldier
Who took the time
To openly complain
About the insanity
Of the terrible pain
That he experienced
And saw in combat.
He wrote about that
In his famous novel
And powerful poems
That sound like funeral hymns
And expose the worldwide myth
That war’s cruel bloodshed
Is “The Red Badge of Courage,”
When the reality is
It leaves millions of people
Dying and dead.
Have you read
Stehpen’s works?

War’s Crime?
When children
And noncombatants
Are being killed
War’s crime
Is revealed.
Soldier’s deaths
Are glorified
As heroic
While responsibility
For children’s death
Is denied.

When I was a tiny child I would ask my parents, “Why is there war?” and it would make me cry. I still ask that question and sometimes it still makes me cry.

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