The Monuments
The monuments are gone
Good riddance I say
Talk about losing a battle
They lost an entire war
Cold cast iron faces
of Lee, Jackson, and Jefferson Davis,
Put up back in 1890 twenty years
after the death of their cause
Not to mention the obscenity of
their cause, The lost cause
Statues of men, fighters not for
freedom, but for oppression
Men who deserve to
be studied, not gloried
Studied in the same way
you’d study history’s other despots
and tyrants, just to be sure
you’d know how to prevent
similar ones from popping up
They were put up during a time of change
Put up by people afraid of change
Afraid of the people they’d oppressed
So they put up images of Civil War generals
Thinking that would scare change away
Thinking the cold iron faces would be enough
But cast iron doesn’t last forever
Change eventually came in a year of strife
Of death, of anger, almost 130 years later
Monument Avenue
A street once stained with mistakes
of the past Injustices displayed for
Everyone to see, in an otherwise great
city now wiped clean
Like a crack in the foundation patched up
a step in the right direction
On a journey that continues
down a long avenue
Josh Young is a poet, writer, and artist from Richmond, VA. Josh Young’s poems primarily focus on social issues, emotions, and city living in general. Josh Young’s poems use rich imagery and complex metaphors to create images in readers minds and range in styles from sonnets to free verse. In addition to written poetry, Josh Young also competes in poetry slams and open mic readings. Josh Young has published in Voices of the Valley magazine.
Image: vividmirage, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
