The biggest question
for many of my friends
as they slice and dice
and chat and scat
and tweet and skeet
the news from war zones
round the world
under all their other questions
is

who are you rooting for

I’m sure they would
deny that
claiming instead
to hate all war
and wishing it was
all gone away
but
I have to ask

who are you rooting for

I think what they truly want
is for the prettier flag bar graph or table to win
the only war they actually care about
being the war to shut adversaries up
through superior use of graphics
invocation of Godwin’s Law
well turned meme
well framed news story comment

who are you rooting for
 
Buddy
you are rooting of course for yourself
You’ll be sad when that other war is over because
it’s a messy one indeed that never seems nailed down

and without an accurate body count at the end
your charts will suffer 

It’s a ten showers day
though you are not visibly
more unclean
today;  some days
you take ten showers,
though ten showers
are not enough on those days
when you cannot forget
you were born
into your family,
and your family was
a stewpot of blood.

Take a hundred showers, take a thousand,
spend all day under the stream
or in the steam, it won’t be enough.
Even when you sleep you sleep dirty
remembering the reddened people,
their hands upon you, sick satisfaction
and ogrish comfort you took there
in the midst of soil and stink.  

No,
neither ten
nor one hundred
nor ten thousand
showers shall be enough.

Better off, now, to do one of two things:
drown yourself
getting fantastically
and falsely clean,

or move on.  Admit
to the blood in your teeth and
the clots under your nails.
Admit that it feels good
to have survived.   You must have done it right
and there’s no need
to hide it and never go back
to the stewpot again,

no matter how strongly the blood-stink pulls you
because it is bitter and iron-rich
and smells unforgettably like home.