war is an industry
cloaked in big words
whose product
is death
and profit
is image

with a false sense of security
power, and liberty
built in such layers
with so many names
signing so many papers
on matters that they
have no right to sign

that when someone asks
who is responsible
for the schools blown apart
or the rapes of young girls
names slip like water
through the fingers that search

because that one person
was instructed by this
one person
and that one person
was instructed by this
one person

so inevitably you get lost
in the game of name-blaming
and the questions of ethics
are subservient
to the chances of victory
and damage isn’t allowed
to the profit of image

without image you are
no longer the truth
and they are no longer
the wrong
and soon the lines
that separated so clearly
blur one into the other
and it is hard to decipher
who the enemy is

and without this
discernment
between the right
and the wrong
the reasons for fighting
don’t seem so clear
and questions are raised
and voices are heard
and victims are mourned
and colours don’t matter
and neither do prayers

and so those in power
keep these lines straight
with the language of war
to keep out of sight
the responsibility to be had
or the mourning of millions
or the injustice of papers
being signed in corrupt ink

until the public stands up on their own
and erases the lines so rhetorically imposed
and realizes the enemy are not men with dark skin
but obscurity of justice and reason within
the industry of war will continue on raging
through distant lands that are actually close
and the innocent will continue to suffer
and the poor will only get poorer
and in time, the children in this ostracized world
will become bitter and eager
with their own image of evil
and their own language of war.