My Newsweek fell open and there,
crouched in our most supposedly
front and center fears of converging
perspective (and not to mention bad
ass beyond all reckoning)—beyond
the cuddly comprehensions of brown
fuzzy-faced goatlets on the way home
from school who bound away from me,
bleating for their mommies, the street kids
sorting though trash at the edge of my
village, and that something something
something all romantic comedies have
in common—he points his two-fist trigger
grip, his combat grey and space-age things,
the goggle-pried whites of his eyes and
that cool, no-questions, counterterror
ender of irrevocable sentences,
                                     straight at me.

In a suit with brass buttons and
a tie to the red zig-zags, a nameless
past but full of muscles struts
bald ahead through the staggering
sunshine. Self-styled, heroic behind
silvered shades and sidelong looks,
crooked fingers and trademarked NFL
Sunday afternoon touchdown catches
signed in the endzone by the same
brandname receivers, all takers drug
down to the ground by the face
mask threat of his stubby submachine
gun hung low at the hip and swaying
back and forth as if to say something
                                        slow and persuading…

And then there’s the roadblock:
Iraq. The same faker cigars, that lame,
squirrels-ass mustache, just like a
year ago behind his daddy’s barn! And
now look at the M-16 slung over his
shoulder as if it’s that classic red wiffle-bat 
turning grasses yellow all over America’s
casual backyards—the kind we used to hit
your brother with?—or the Toys’R’Us
bargain buy from last Christmas’s
                                          bad movie tie-ins!

This week, while they were strong,
I think I forgot someone’s birthday.
The boys in my class
pretend-wet their pants
and laughed when I got mad.