TWELVE

In the early nineties
when I was in middle school
my mom, who had marched
on Washington the three decades earlier,
succumbing to social pressure
at her new job, bought
a Desert Shield/Desert Storm
sweatshirt from a coworker
and bestowed it upon me.
I regarded it oddly
where it hung in my closet
like a white flag with ironed-on
aircraft carriers and tanks -
the first pro-war garment
I had ever touched.
In school chorus we sang
"How many roads
must a man walk down?"
and because I wanted so badly to fit in
I sang along with Rick Faugno
and his variation on the refrain
and because I didn't understand
the meaning of the odd words
in my mouth, I proudly repeated them
when my mom drove me home that day:
"The answer, my friend,
is blow-jobbing in the wind,
the answer is blow-jobbing in the wind."