At What Cost
or, descent into madness
They say if you have to ask
the price, you can’t afford it.
Is that why no one likes
to tally the cost of war?
Not only the dollars and sense,
but the hidden costs to
the collective psyche,
the collective society.
Those taking the shots
are never, no, never
the ones calling them.
Coincidence, I’m sure.
Sherman said, “war is hell”
and he didn’t lie, but let’s try
to call it what it truly is.
War is madness. Every time.
Good war, bad war, just war,
I can’t take it anymore.
All war is grim, it is all a sin.
Dress it up how you like,
the choice of uniform is yours.
You’ll never make it pretty.
The canvas is despair, the painter
knows only the color red.
There is no Art of War.
There is only iconoclasm
of the most brutal sort.
The spirit dies with each pull of the trigger.
Yours, theirs, ours.
We are all intertwined, with each other
and with the Divine. Must I remind
you that we are meant to be
our brother’s keeper? Must I
go deeper?
War is a breaking of communion,
a disruption of the union, unseen,
but truer than the whirl and spin
of death’s dance on the battlefield.
Weep for the dead and for those
who took their lives, victims
on both sides of the equation.
What a terrible algebra that
assumes 1 is not equal to 1, depending
on who is writing the formula.
Why are some more important than some
Others.
Your jagged geometry, as bad as your arithmetic.
Axis and allies, bedfellows of depravity.
Death tolls, your favorite form of math,
but those numbers rarely jive.
Among the dead are those alive,
walking among us, damaged.
The cost of this madness is beyond
calculation, but
one day
the bill will come due.
About the Creator
Randy Baker
Poet, author, essayist.
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Comments (9)
This poem is got sadness on it but great job congratulations 🎉🎉
This is so accurate. It’s sad and yea, it’s maddening. If all the funds ever spent on war was retained, there would be no deficit. And millions of lives would have lived into old age. Instead, the price of war continues to affect us in ways we can never prepare for.
War is ordered by those who don't fight the wars. whose souls dont die from the wanton massacre of the innocent. They spawn PTSD in good men making them mad and broken. Wars are ordered by mad men who are weak.
Powerful stuff, Randy! I was riveted to your every word. War is madness for which the only cure may be complete and utter destruction. :( Great job!
"One day the bill will come due" was such a thrilling line to end this poem with. This is a remarkable poem, Randy. And as everyone has been saying already, I agree, war is such madness. I wish those who start it could be thrown into a locked room, like siblings after a fight, and be told they can't leave until they make up (of course, if only it were that easy).
I don't understand and would never understand the need for a war. I also learned a new word, iconoclasm!
You just said a lot of things and you're right... war is madness...🙁
I like where you went with this. War is madness on a truly devastating scale. Well done!
Your poem flows so well. I liked the twist in it.