_Standing with Marshal Gebbie_
No trumpet sounds.
No banner bleeds.
Just the quiet hum
of satellites watching
what we dare not name.
Power does not sleep,
it drips
from trade routes,
from whispered sanctions,
from the tremble
of a diplomat’s hand
hovering over the red phone.
We are not at war,
but we rehearse it
in algorithms,
in tariffs,
in the way maps
shrink and swell
without consent.
The empire is hungover,
but still it walks,
barefoot through proxy fields,
cloaked in plausible deniability.
And we,
the breathers between borders,
write poems
on the backs of embargoes,
sing lullabies
in contested airspace,
and pray
that silence
is not mistaken
for surrender.