Slowly approaching a grasp of this uncertain reality
Tentatively found my equilibrium slightly before
entering the airport
whistling the U.S. Blues
wearing sandals,plaid shorts and a Ween T-shirt;
total slacker ware,
feeling good
in a post graduation Austin sort of way.
Encountered the sobering sight of
a pimply young boy in full Army garb
Forcing me to examine
what I had done when I was his age
as a dumb ass among dumb asses,
doing dumb ass things
like finger banging
teenage girls in
small town, Texas, U.S.A.
Raising Hell
certainly not sitting nervously in an airport
flipping my phone upside down
then right side up,
obviously deep in perturbed
and anxious thought.
Would this be one of the young men
my young brother would be in charge of stitching up
patching up?
doping down?
saving?
or putting away?
Would one of these young men
be responsible for an errant bullet
that led to my brother’s crippling demise?
And what of my brother’s final moments
before pre-boarding
setting off
to save young men like these
out in desert country?
A place of which I never wanted intimate knowledge
I wasn’t ready for him to go
didn’t want him to die
but the only way to control when one went
was to off one’s self
something I already knew I wasn’t brave enough to do.
Even if he lived through it all
he wouldn’t be the same
when he returned.
Someday he would in fact die
whether it be
in five,ten, fifteen
twenty or forty years.
Even if this young boy here
somehow rose to lieutenant
saved his whole platoon
from dying face down in the desert,
mouth full of sand,
chest full of bullets and lungs full of blood
he would eventually go too
someday,somewhere.
Even if this plane I boarded crashed,
and I miraculously survived
the laws of physics,law of averages
would get to me too.
Who knew when Armageddon would come for us all?
No need to panic
I suppose there could be worse realities eh?
I could be a blackhead on the face
of a 16 yr old virgin nerd who
jerked off with Vaseline
to naked photos of Marge Simpson.
I could be the pus on the tip of an Okie’s dick
after he caught the clap from some bar floozy
with bad tattoos and missing teeth.
I could be the boil on a plumber’s ass.
I could be a clot of blood on a stripper’s tampon.
I could be a herpes sore.
A booger in a 3rd grader’s nose
picked, smashed, and then eaten.
I could’ve been a fly chowing down
on some fresh road kill or
the toe jam in a geriatric’s foot,
the bunion on someone’s soon to be ex-wife,
scraped by a butter knife into the kitchen sink
or an in grown hair on a sweaty ball sack.
So there was no need to panic.
Change is a constant interloper
so why get attached to this human existence?
Worrying only hindered me
from enjoying the trip.
we were all going
to die,
then decompose
before becoming something else like
cosmic dust particles,
or spatial bacteria
and there was nothing I could do about it except
go out in style.
So there was no need to panic about any of it.
Worrying wasn’t going to help me one bit.
~Edward Austin Robertson~
Nuclear Polio Vaccination 
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