Troupers

Not exactly troopers.
Airmen though:
tropes galore among us.
Playing against the uniform;
against casts
typed in groups of young men.
Caricatures hiding secrets.

Masks onion-layered
over our
faces. Peeling off Shagger Jack -
finding Closet John: hiding one
cliché with
still another assumed persona
pilfered from Hollywoodland.

All so neatly packaged:
not a gnat's
chance to break our mould.
Saying expected things, officered
into dumb
and seething insolence -
actors playing soldiers.

Troupers all.