Memorial Day – 2024... origin of holiday

Strong and brave men and women
gave their level best
crème de la crème
strongest and bravest
leaving grieving significant others
with emotional agony
within treasured chest
o'er the redoubt
the enemy did crest,
where lovely bones
of forebears for everest

battling hostility over
well fought over ass strew turf
among warring factions finessed
in manicured cemeteries
(sacred burial grounds) ye guessed
dead bodies strewn across killing fields
forsook their lives eternal peace they rest
honored and revered succumbed mortal
electric kool-aid acid test
though I question if sacrificed life
worth a spit of land to wrest.
Now pardon ma faux pas
indicative of generic geek
a reasonable rhyme rhyme,
from dis po' pa try'n to be sleek
original poem crafted years gone by
necessitated minor tweak
where sense and sensibility weak.

Officially called Decoration Day
proclaimed on 5 May 1868
by General John Logan
first observed on 30 May 1868
Waterloo N.Y. officially
declared the birthplace
by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966.

Though eight score minus one year
(minor emendation regarding time frame
since original date I crafted poem)
Appomattox, a psychological balm
helped stitch frayed nation to calm
until hell on earth
killed, obliterated, and rained napalm,
(a portmanteau of two
of the constituents
of the original thickening
and gelling agents:
coprecipitated aluminium salts
of naphthenic acid
and palmitic acid)
served as silent psalm
since bombardment at Fort Sumter qualm
including intervening wars
such as raging battles on the Somme
and the war between
Northern and Southern Vietnam.

National holiday most adept
at uniting Civil War fallen soldiers
when fiercely armed as brother in arms crept
against opposing forces, which took
by surprise “enemies” or found inept
ill prepared troops with surprise mortal
blow which ambushed attackers leapt
mowing down valiant soldiers, thus
becoming slain grooms who eternally slept
sorrowful lamentable hymns from
widowed brides tears wept.

Cease fire that day
terminating internecine flay
o’er mounds of earth whence
bones o boys donned blue or gray
a day of remembrance for those
who died in our nation's service lay

celebrated this last Monday every May
one must know tis not about division
boot about reconciliation
and sacrifice brave heroes did pay,
the price of their lives for granted
freedoms enjoyed as american lee-way.

Forsooth, now we cherish too, the Poppy red
that grows on fields where valor led,
it seems to signal to the skies
that blood of heroes never dies
acknowledged courtesy bunting
(strings of colorful, monochrome,
beige triangular flags and lengths
of fabric in the colors of national flags
gathered and draped into swags
or pleated into fan shapes)
visibly draped and/or hung
honoring the dead.