Absolutely Nothing

So we are gonna have a war
and it will be a tiny word,
far too short to tell of legends
or the terror and the grief.
We will wage it for the benefit
of the fat wallets of thieves,
and to make our money faster
we’ll turn men into machines.

We can never get enough
though you can be damn sure we’ll try.
We will cure a child’s blindness
then charge two million for the eyes.

So put your hands above your head
and put your hope under the ground.
There are crazy motherfuckers
who are living in your town
and we will surely find them all.

Who are those suspicious people
who are hiding in the hall?
I was sure that we had been as clear
as a gypsy’s crystal ball.

Don’t you tell me wretched lies
about some children in their beds
or the thoughts that they conceal
as they wish for buttered bread.

We will butcher them with knives.
We know what shadows have done.

We will give our blood god names
and build Her palace in the sun.
We will treat apologies
like the leprosy they are
and we’ll transmute the homes of hundreds
into a spacious airport bar.

The mothers’ stories linger
after gunpowder is gone
telling you of rooms where in past years
they had once housed a son.

The young of wealthy nations
will write for you plaintive poems
in languages you do not speak,
conveying thoughts like cobblestones.

And in a decade we will find a grave
that we dare not look inside,
whisper “they will get dignity
denied when yet alive,”
but we’ll build another monument
for a war we’ve claimed we lost.

We killed Their sixty for Our one
and spent a hundred trillion cents
and wrecked another land to rubble
in search of an endless foe.
We dug deep furrows in a field
and we fill them up with salt
if it seems a little harsh
I can swear it’s not my fault.

It should come as no surprise,
and it never should have been,
that we took our mirrors down
when they showed monsters and not men.

Then we lay our heads on pillows
and we whisper to the wind
that they couldn’t have been humans
or we couldn’t have killed them.