Tet on TV:
voiceless screams in black and white
and a funny little map
of dashes and dots.
"What's that, Mummy?"
Reality in the raw, baby doll.
It comes on after Playschool
and just before bed:
the commentary is quietly circumspect
about Agent Orange.
Waiting for the draft ballot
the grown-ups creep, in sneakers.
No-one in pre-school died.
No-one in pre-school went.
Just the odour of moral exhaustion with my Milo
washed down with corpses in the paddy-fields:
four is such an impressionable age.
and they wonder why we like our cop shows fast
and hard -
it's nostalgia -
