The best way you can
honor our departed sons,
daughters, brothers, and
sisters is to become a
war-tax resister, don’t pay
to send any more
of our loved ones off to war
don’t buy the bullets,
the bombs, and the body bags
or the caskets and the flags
Don’t pay to erase
towns and people from the map
and then clap and bow
your head during the parade,
mourning our dead from the shade
of these old trees here
because we pay year after
year to send them off
to occupy foreign lands,
to appease Wall Street’s demands
you have to stand up
for truth and justice if you
want to honor them
don’t just bow and clap and crack
beer after beer after years
and years and years and
years and years and years and years
of the same old song,
dance, and tales, the same story,
same parade, same mattress sales.