Look, on this television, beautiful xanthous fields
of sunflowers, wild fauna dripping with insects
But oh no! Here we come, our fore bearers,
men of a hardier time, men of seven day work weeks,
before unions, buried in coal mine soot, hands bloody
with the stench of factory, industrial progress
They’ve come onto our screen posthumously,
these rugged bringers of destruction and death,
striating these beautiful wild fields with deep wounds
trenches of murky decay, bacterial death,
the diaphanous fog of chemical destruction
sweeping across my screen, those fields, those humans
with halting old footage terror, grainy harbinger of doom
Feel the bass of my sound system pummel that earth
with 120’s, and 95’s, permanently peppering
the soft French soil with non biodegradable plastic
(thankfully, much of war’s refuse is ecologically friendly,
except of course the burned out tanks, rubbled homes,
but all of that can be buried under a mound,
as this television most certainly will be someday,
and the mound can be converted into a golf course,
can even grow little sapling maples on its terraced slopes)
Now these men are sprinting towards each other
in footage of silky black and white, advancing over
landscapes more befitting a moon of Jupiter
than a minor, repetitive Van Gogh painting
This charge is more visceral carnage, torn tendons
distorted bone shattered by hurtling bolts of metal,
more a Dali from his days during the revolution
(amazing that we limited beings can make such lasting
beauty from nearly anything our eyes take hold of)
But now this show is talking of courage and honor,
such things that men for centuries hold dear
I’ll recuse myself from such debate, for blithely advancing
towards your certain death seems a matter of personal interest,
though Fuck it: how is such stupid obedience courage?
self sacrifice, Sure, standing up for justice, No Doubt
but is such destructive sacrifice really our best angel,
or is it merely perpetuating our own, fragile fears
that we are creatures of habit and ease, willing to bludgeon
because it will be quicker, more satisfying to our feral minds,
But my God in heaven, would you look at those fields
all battered like a submissive wife, crated with indifference,
a passive victim of our puritanical human malice
I want to pick her up, clean her off, hold her broken hand,
tell her we’re sorry, that we’ll do better next time,
that such selfish violence will never happen again,
but I look ahead into future’s terrifying void
knowing my words will serve only to deepen her hurt
the next time we carve up her torso, bleed on her breasts
I would tell her all this anyway, because beautiful lying
sits easier for all of us than ugly truth,
but I’m just so comfortable here, prone on my couch,
watching these long dead men fight over some worthy cause or another