I'm Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

My friend Chris and I had just completed a shift. We were teenagers and it was a Friday. We spent a long day flipping frozen patties, insulting vats of French fries. We were on our way to his house to play video games.

About 10 minutes into our walk, a guy approached us on a bicycle, telling us about an underground house party.

Chris said, sure, faster than I could vocalize my exhaustion.

He was super friendly and hyped up the emcees who were

supposed to perform. We followed him into a low-lit alley. We heard no music. Just when I went to

tell Chris I was heading home, his eyes got big and he took off.

When I turned around, the guy had a gun pointed to my face.

It happened that fast.

I remember heavy steel on my temple.

He ordered me to lay down and to slowly reach into my pocket and hand him all my money.

His voice was raspy and quick.

My heart raced.

I thought of my little brother and my mother.

I thought of my baseball team.

People I wouldn't see anymore.

He poked the gun into my back and told me to count to a hundred. Then I could get up.

I heard music off in the distance. I counted. I didn't make it to a hundred. I raised my body out of the dirt at 33. I was changed. As kids, me and my friends played war, both in video games and in the park.

We had no sense of the fear that permeates places of armed conflict,

or what it meant to actually face one's own death.

We had no idea of the questionable acts, the moral dissent and injury that accompanies war.

Today's haunting poem, an embedded abscedarian, gets at the bizarre alter reality of violence,

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