"One of Chuck Norris's movies,"

my old man would say, and I'd smile and follow the video store clerk,
who, in my eyes, took on the stature of a
bank manager about to
grant us the loan of a lifetime.
He'd come back with the tape in a box,
a full-color picture of the hero shirtless,
his face sweaty, a pair of machine guns
in his hands. It took me decades
to understand the sublime imperialist propaganda behind his stunts,
always killing Arabs, Russians, Vietnamese, Japanese—Norris killed everything from
the East. But back then, the rickety jeeps
exploding, the watchtowers
blown up by grenades, all
the trappings of war were sold in
Chuck's miraculous kicks. A guy who
acted for the Empire. I know that now, as an old man.

The old man doesn't get bitter because he's getting old,
but because he's beginning to understand.

Today I want to understand nothing, I want to remember
my old man sitting next to me
at that table in Ramos Mejia,
with the VCR hot from so much shooting,
and tell Norris that he made me spend hours
playing at being him, throwing mud grenades
and advancing crouched in the jungles
looking for Vietnamese with a dangerous
broom loaded with the highest technology.