we will never forget you

we will never forget you,        
they say, sometimes while            
the blood has not yet            
been scrubbed from            
the latest atrocity scene            
            
your names will live on forever, they say,            
because you are with the angels            
or at the right hand of Jesus  
or god needed a few more—  
anything to assuage the pain,    
   
even as the latest flower shrines          
drop wilting blossoms from despair        
         
even as the mass derangement            
serves up another and yet another            
AR-15 purchase with Glock-packing        
madmen spewing grievances so banal              
they come with boilerplate cliches.    
     
sometimes you hear them say that        
they’re in a better place            
way up in the sky somewhere            
but wherever it is            
             
it’s usually a cemetery            
where the grass and the weeds            
are cut down by whirling scythes of time,      
where only the plastic flowers thrive            
unnoticed by the passers-by.