Missed the Wars

I missed Korea and Vietnam, growing up too slow for the harvest. Of the survivors, many seemed numbed, as if Nurse Ratched had broken their minds with a hatchet. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan came a lumbering beast dripping sports metaphor, waylaying us with flags and body bags, If I am dying, still telling tall-tales I’ll invent a minor African conflict, a covert operation; speak vaguely of the missing, the horror, my personal bravery. Insist that they place a red poppy in a glass of water by my bedside.