Take a minute.

Click on my
portrait picture.

Forty-three years
since that was snapped.

Look how skinny,
how starched.

Look how hard I'm
trying not to show
my terror,
the absurdly
casual stance.

Look at a child
of twenty
sent to die
for old men.

Look at a picture
taken thousands
of times since.

Think of the pictures
of the lost who never
came home or in pieces
or mentally broken.

America
you demand
too much.

  ~mce