The boy who hopes to paint
a masterpiece
{still a boy, make no mistake}
calms by letting himself be awed
by phosphorescent flashes
gorgeous as a blood-red sun,
saving a particular orange
and that peculiar green
edging a 4th-of-July stunner
for his repertoire, already
daubing them in his mind
between Mars black and that
color with the name it pains
him to pronounce. On the tip
of his tongue when the shell
hits.

The boy who hopes to race
in the Indie 500 — just wait —
compares the racket to that
of a speedway. Crowd roars
its approval as he rounds the last
curve, going all out, but then
in the blind spot something spins
him out. That is when
the noise dies.

The girl {I see her as a girl}
who craves to be a doctor —
surgeon, actually —
mentally bandages a tear
in a gunfire-split sky
and shouts orders for morphine
and plasma stat. Good
she’ll never know what happened
next.

The boys, the girls, the men, the women,
lie, squat, roll, crawl, bog down in muck
under fire beautiful enough to
hurt. All the time hoping
for a break so they have a chance to
see dawn.