There seems nothing more civilised than the management of savagery,
remote and air conditioned.
Once separated from its delivery by sail boats and oceans,
by wax seals and emissaries.

Now only satellites and microwaves disperse the shock waves.
Cobra delegates are traumatised in real time as targets fall,
their lattes cool as does their blood
but “Fair Trade” product keeps their conscience clear.

We on the other hand are tools of necessity,
clinically educated…cold as hollow points.
Through us their message flows like the bullet through the barrel,
the recoil never reaching back to them, is lodged in us.

Go-Pro Call of Duty whores, accountable only for our failures,
Justifying the absence of target acquisition.
So sorry that we failed to kill for our sleeping masters,
sorry that they wake to the news of survival not death.

And now with that memory, we cannot sleep or face our children,
I can’t vote without the bile rising from my gut.
That my mark for them permits them murder,
that my hands can never wash clean.

Yet they stand clear and free of my crimes,
they absolve themselves of my savagery
and look on me the savage,
that I be somehow dead yet still alive.

© Wlofgar 2019