In Canada, we commemorate our war dead with stupid little plastic poppies on pins. Perhaps you've heard: "In Flander's field the poppies grow," etc.

I said fuck the poppies in Grade 2. It was the same year - 1966 - that I refused the Lord's prayer and remained silent in my desk while others God-Saved Our Gracious Queef Elizabitch. It was apparent to me that prolonged public displays of mandatory grief were institutionalized in the full cynical flush of hypocrisy to sentimentalize the death of young men so that other young men would follow in their boot steps - even were the prosecution of violence unjust. Given the brass in the back drawer it was an interesting decision, with some minor familial consequences, but I continue to not wear the fucking poppies (as much as I enjoy opiates). When I wish some mature reflection on the facts of war, I read Wilfred Owen.


DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

(Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori. - Horace.
It is sweet and right to die for your country.)