The War is Like Honey in Holiday Lights

This poem I wrote on Tuesday December 12th, 2019. It is a prompt response to the Christmas classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland in the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis” a sad Christmas movie about World War II. A hope that the following Christmas will be better than the current year (a year filled with families being forced apart by the war)
This was a prompt using by Daily Wisdom Words by wonderful poet Abuh Monday Eneojo.

The War is Like Honey In Holiday Lights:

In this Christmas,
we are in these smoking lights.
In our poverty,
In our never-ending wars.

Like every Christmas it seems,
Ever since I became a young man –
they forced me into these hate battles
Fighting “enemies” whose faces –
Are in family photos
Just like mine.

The government has tried to white-out my mind.
Many years ago,
blank me out,
a dot to be eaten by the machine.

Replaced me into the sticky,
fill in the wounds with the honey,
in stitches.
Cohesive, bare boned and breathing in last heartbeats.

There are the memories
Pretty voices humming
In hope,
I pray to a sky
That cannot fathom all the angels.
The angels,
That supposed to be cradling us all.

As these nightmares burn in our skin,
layer me in towers upon towers of fears.
I try to imagine,
a boyhood love of bells ringing,
instead of missile sirens purging the purity from the air.

I will always have my mother’s voice.
She will sing to me from the haunts.
Sing to me,
in hope –
as more of my brother’s fall.

I cradle in this sticky dirt,
in my cuts.
And hold it up,
So my angels can cradle me.