Lying to Get into Gettysburg

They say only the dead

can stay, though we are all

allowed to visit, to reimagine

the great speech, the great battle,

the great folly of men against men

killing to settle an argument

about freedom and race and humanity.

A failed discussion with canon

and bullets and bayonets,

the blue were buried here

the terrorists were carted away.

Like faraway Vicksburg,

soft quiet rolling green

where children run and play

and pretend to shoot great

weapons into the tree line.

The dead do not remember,

nor did their deaths have value

or even meaning only death

and loss and those who lost them,

now dead, even their memory

and the memory of the memory

has faded, like you and I, too

will fade and the pointlessness

of our lives will be forgotten.