6 O'clock News

I hated Huntley and Brinkley

reading their body counts 
to me every night of my 

adolescence: the X's and the O's.

Box scores of a game 
that would not end.

 I would draw Viet Nam 

in the dirt and wonder why 

everyone just wouldn't

let them settle it.  Alone.

The endless casualties of war 
looked anything but casual to me.

 

They didn't have to convince me,

I never wanted to go
and die in the jungle
of no return.

Finally, it stopped a few weeks

before I  turned eighteen. 
I lived.