Arlington Miami


See there!
Crude copies of tombstones
cut from white plastic foam board,
small goal-post-shaped coat-hanger wire
holds each of the thousands to the ground.


They have a real name, a military rank, a young age,
just like real stones over real bodies
lying in another part of the same real Earth.
Real persons are marked in black on white, by a real hand,
and chiseled into our minds, and cut into our hearts.


At first we read each small bit of the person.
At first we comment:
“God she was young!”
“Oh man, this one was only 18!”
“This one had four kids.”
Sometimes someone fills a new blank
or
a passerby stops, writes the name of a known love.
Sometimes real flowers are placed near a real name.


Sometimes a tear slides out or
a butterfly flaps her air forcing wings inside our stomach.
Sometimes the poignancy of one, a single name,
weakens the knees and creates a humbling bow.
Sometimes the overwhelming vastness of the thousands
forces mental overload and retinal detachment.
Sometimes the sheer fatigue of it all
causes a small prayer of sorts
as one of us falls to the ground,
prostrated from heat, or something else.


But such pauses, such humanization of the process
of the placement of thousands of representations,
we find slows the work of planting the little imitation tombstones
and we begin to callous more than our hands --
if not, the wreckage of our emotions would shut us down.


Is it a political statement – this Arlington in Miami?
Is it an imitation or a replication or a demonstration?
Is it only “a reminder of the human cost?”
Is it “a recognition of the soldiers?”
It is after all only those enlisted on “our side”
and even then Arlington Miami can draw weird glances,
or cause an odd invisibility as others feign blindness,
or garner incautiously couched accusations.


On the other side of the calloused hand,
if we tried to represent
ALL the human costs,
all the Earthly costs,
we’d never finish in time.


Is it a political act? an Anti-war act?
After all it is a Veterans for Peace’s action.
Hummmm….


Is it real?
Oh yes! it is ever so real.
Each name comes from a very real list.
Each plastic gravestone marks a real kin.
Even those without a name count as a real number.


Each row, each column, each section,
each time, each…
reaches into our systems,
torques the amplification
on a silent scream
that resonates our collective silent pretense
that the stones are not of us,
that the sticks are not for us,
that the deaths are not by us.


Always at the end of Arlington Miami’s time,
real, living vets,
take the roll,
give voice to the voiceless,
toll the total with the ring of a bell.
Shorts, grimy, slogan inscribed tee-shirts,
worn running shoes, and assorted hats
abound in very unmilitary fashion.
Yet the tolling, the roll calling, the ringing recognition
ARE
solemn and real and righteous.


Not finally but quietly, we all turn away again.
Recollecting our costs and responsibilities.
Recollecting these signs of sins but not of sinners.
Restacking and repacking for the next reconstruction of Arlington.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBZwU6w0hE