The top stories of the day and their details
flicker, tightly sealed under the glass of our
slick, sleek, flat-screen TV. Only the words leak out,
digitized and sterilized for our clean ears.
The smells of blood, urine, and excrement are left
with the reporters on the ground in Iraq, Yemen,
or wherever else they are killing each other,
to kill us. The young journalists, holding back
tears get snarky with the pretty-faced anchors.
Still idealistic, they are, really, angry at us,
the viewers, in our first-world cocoons. They will
remain like this, angry that we do not leave
our lives and march in the streets to change this,
this perma-injustice of the world. But one day
soon, they too will have earned their credentials
of idealism and trench-stench bravado and will
sit in a national anchor seat and, like an old hand,
will giggle at comments made about their beard growth;
for deep down we are like the Romans of old, strong
and yet frivolous, whereas our barbarians are weak
and yet earnest in their determination to destroy
their perceived Rome.
