what soldier comes home free from war? what mind can hold still, unseeing horrors? what hope is left once you’ve tasted death, drank deeply from an empty cup, lifted lever up in the name of duty?

what family is free of war when a soldier returns home, beaten, beating? what life is free of war when it’s been relentlessly coded, when it feeds on us as children?

war is weak, breaks to will of strength in matters that matter more than cheap plastic goods and all-you-can-eat tinder “love.”

it’s a virus that ruts the earth, makes us sick, fragments our souls, disconnects us from who we are:

limitless, eternal.

so why do we keep ripping each other to shreds in soulless reruns? why do we follow leaders who don’t fight for themselves, only sends our sons, daughters, loves to a fate worse than death? to a life that doesn’t feel worthy of living?

when we drop the facade of who we’re told we are, it’s clear:

they are few;

we are many.

so why do we buy into lies that destroy us? why do we perpetuate systems that build egomaniacal empires? why do we prop up blind leaders who cannot even see their own way through? why do we assume those very same systems could possibly save us when they actively break us, set us against each other enroute to a nuclear holocaust?