03.04.03 - 6:30 p.m.

i feel a vague hatred for the people walking around
bloated bellies protruding, bound by sweatshirts
emblazoned with patriotic catchphrases
left over from the last time we so publicly
liberated a country. i cant even feel sorry but
oh the old men, gray flat-topped grandpas with
attics full of fifty year-old loveletters to eighteen
year-old wives ten thousand miles away and photographs
of boys whose deaths they can recount firsthand -
who came home and inherited the family
business but never changed their haircut.