Let's play war—
decorate tailored coats with trim bright ribbons,
wear rapiers on leather belts
and paint flags bright dripping scarlet,
an emblem of spilled blood we've never seen.
Let's play war—
gather olive-green toy soldiers and line them up
in front of a man and a flag.
Let's give a speech, a grandiose superfluous
with no beginning and no end—
tell the people:
let's kill off a population painstakingly,
tear off limbs, shoot men through hearts, send bullets through skulls and ribcages
and blame it on the dead.
Let's play war.
Let's politicize brutality of the most malevolent kind,
skip battle footage and instead paste limbless heroes
on newspaper covers and magazines,
ignore the magazines of bullets shot through the enemy.
Let's play war—
while the people hide their children in little brick hovels
let's march armies down cobblestone streets
to pepper their windows with bullets
and bombs
and steel.
Let's play war.
Let's kill like we invented it.
YOU ARE READING
Chemical Instability
Poetrysome use poetry as a means of expression, others to create art, and still others as a form of relief. yet, the purest intention behind a poem is none other than writing it simply to keep oneself alive.
