Get disconnected,
And find you are detached from life.
Your fight becomes for the trivial,
And what is obvious to others
Eludes your sight.
You are choked up and smothered,
The fire you started, snuffing out all oxygen-
No longer beneficial.
And then you die

Believe, obey, fight-
Tow the party line!
It's a quick battle,
One waged against your own interest;
It's a sad case,
To watch men spit in their own face.
It's family, God, & country
And no room for the self.
Don't you care about your race?
How will you protect it?
What about your religion?
Enshrine it, defend it, spread it?
Of your state-
Bolster, boast, expansion?
Your God?
Your country?
Your family?

Pixilated war,
And out in the real fields
Insurgents rally against
Tin men and robotic dogs.
Death from above,
Artillery & first-person drones.
I sip an energy drink
In 60° AC Fahrenheit weather,
I don't stop to think
As to if orders deserve questions
And whether I would be satisfied with answers.
They don't have drafts,
We have programs & apps
To pilot steel fellas.
Suppress, eliminate, rescue,
Some of them even punch up the graphics.
Last week, I traipsed through
The inhospitable Arabian Desert,
Many decades ago rendered entirely uninhabitable,
To help diplomats involved in a helicopter crash.
The day after that,
I was in the snowy north
Fighting red droids.
And soon after,
On an island in the Pacific
Defending from adversarial users.
I must have died 10,000 times.
And from what I hear on the news
We make advances only to be set back,
And vice versa,
But it's been seventeen good years
Going back & forth.
I don't know if I can recall what we're fighting over.

Speak of love,
So many hopeless hearts,
With none to give.
Something to dream they'll find,
When they aren't even sure what to look for.
Find it on your own first.
Otherwise, you'll just end up hurting others
Or hurting worse.

Charcoal hands
To hold my ignited love,
The only reciprocity
Is to be maimed & scarred
With flames beyond the fire's control.
Gasoline loves a match-
Bright & hot, destructive, fast.
Burns out to within, and then
It's all exhausted;
Embers smolder to ash.

You are superior to 𝘸𝘩𝘰?
I am no one's inferior,
And if someone has differing conjecture;
Congratulations, I believe you!
Clearly, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 are less than 𝘮𝘦.