Throw-up Tuesday.

Here’s a throwback. I remember when I first moved up here some twenty years ago that if you needed underwear, you had to drive to St J to buy them. Then, a few years later, Wal-Mart came to town and everything you ever wanted was ten minutes away.  And then, ten years after that, came the internet and Amazon. Now I can buy practically anything I want and not leave my house. And today, some time after all these changes, I can socialize on the internet, piss people off, and not even leave my house. Progress is grand. I wonder what’s next.

My father Walter Sr. fought in WW2. He fought in North Africa, Sicily, the Middle East, and he was there, fighting on D-day. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. And then, when he was done with all of that (yes that’s right, I’m bragging on my dad, which he would hate by the way) he went to the Pacific theater. He served in every single year of the war.

 He didn’t like to talk about the war at all, but the one thing he did impress on me was the fact that he didn’t fight for all those years for me, or anyone else, to disparage another human being. You never, and I’m going to say these offensive words, you never, ever used the words chink, nigger, spic, kike or anything like them while he was around because, he said, that was the whole point of defeating the fascists, the Nazis, in the first place. Now if my father had to go vote, pay his taxes or go to work every day and walk past a Nazi flag, he would be, well I can’t even describe how pissed he would be. Now imagine if you were a Jew or a Roma having to do the same. You all know what I’m getting at.

Now I’m not even going to get into the fact that this particular style of the Confederate flag was brought out as a big fuck you in response to civil rights legislation and the dismantling of Jim Crow, that’s beside the point. The point is take the flag down, its offensive and has been for years. Who cares about their racist, treasonous heritage. Their heritage sucks. Fuck them, and the horse they rode in on.

For Now

The last breath you took

was my breath too.

The last embrace

the last hand

the last look-

all that we held

all that was ours, for so long

will be ours to have

again and again

between the breaths

I take for you.