The AK-47s make the world go round,
drones deliver freedom express style,
granades determine laws
and Mausers make history.
Machetes leave warnings on limbs.
Words grow tired,
go cheap brothel bright and garish.
Words become bitter like absynthe.
This story is getting old.
Its been a hundred years.
A century of rubble like rhymes,
of dismantling words brick by brick.
of machine gun rhythms and looking for epitaphs
for those who came back alive.
A century of anthems for doomed youth.
You want the truth? War will not end us,
just diminish. We will not end war-
just limit it, this much we have learned.
Among all other things we are made of it.
Hide in a cabaret kind of life
or take yourself to the front line
wave a flag, don a shirt in the color of your choice,
loose the taste for peace.
It makes no difference.
The choice is not about the color of the shirt.
Hard times breed a thousand choices
day by day. Some, youll thank
all the gods you never had to make.
A thousand choices and their lack-
the very definition and curse
of times you never chose.
