Tannenberg

It's the easy way.
To know something
and make something of it,
pretty heavy.
And lesser thinkers than we
pulled the airtime
necessary to call for their heads.
Waves bounding
and bouncing across
generations, vaguely,
connecting the tame rebellions
of our forefathers to the
graying bulletins and bullet-points
of the Sunday edition.
That's nothing new.
On mountaintops
surveying plantations and social experiments
they we they
look on the bright side:
geographically.
Alpine climates pass in pine-framed paintings,
coming of age, but who needs
an autumn there.
It's not ideal.
Three thousand
years
of medical advances
and most of what we
they do,
is let us heal ourselves.
But we cut the cancer out.
We should know
it's all misperceptions
and inflated childhood memories.
My mother explained Kent State to me
at an impressionable age,
and I still picture
the John Wayne battalions of
Monte Cassino and Normandy
coming down on Kisthardt Elementary,
the blood still on the blacktop
sending me into a dizzy spell;
I can't get past that,
and if anyone can
how can I move on?
Heritage,
is the name of the game,
and we are all born victims,
barring Providence,
there go
and corporate intrigue
and an overwhelming
and keeping it topical,
and sure, he's a fascist,
but by God,
the ratings,
by God.
and scheduling,
and ten-years down the road,
will we have anything to rebuild?
Is that optimism?
an emotion
we never learned in school,
despite your best efforts.