9:02pm October 18, 2014

In the Name of Memory

They say life on the battlefield is sink or swim
And only the strong survive
And those of us who survived, we survived
And we say to the next
As they’re standing in line:
We’ve done our time, now it’s your turn

We’ve learned our lesson too well
We’ve taken our hell and passed it on
It will make you strong
We say as we turn away

And how easy is it to forget
The ones who walked with us, talked with us
The ones we fought alongside
They didn’t survive, they fell

They were as strong as we
But we can’t see this to be so
For it would show how little power
We had in the hour that they died

And we honor our fallen comrades
With a rousing inspirational speech
You are our successors, we say
And there’s no room to be weak

Because life on a battlefield is sink or swim
And only the strong survive
And those of us who survived, we survived
And we say to the next
As they’re standing in line
We’ve done our time, now it’s your turn

We’ve learned our lesson too well
We’ve taken our hell and passed it on
It will make you strong,
We say as we turn away

And how easy it is to forget
The ones who walked with us, talked with us
The ones we fought alongside
They didn’t survive, they fell
Consumed by the hell
We recreate
In the name of memory

[Originally posted to my main poetry blog, which has a comments section.]

[This song was written around 2002, but it’s applicable to so many situations I see playing out in front of me every day, it felt like a good time to resurrect it.]