Escalation

The tanks crunch over the line in the sand

past open fields, little houses and

dirt roads, and dogs and cats

and ageing babus with mismatched hats,

living marginal lives, simple country wives.

With boys inside, they perch on skirts of cities

knowing neither hate nor pity.

Girding their loins, they calculate positions,

shoot their load, and then transition

from human beings to war machines.

In cafes and shops, we watch on phones

the lightening skies, the shifting bones

of old men who sadly know,

from days long past, how this will go,

a thousand broken lives in their eyes.

And on TV screens behind the curtain,

They debate, is it conjecture or something certain -

those glammed up journalistic bitches,

talking tough like guys in cowboy pictures -

that one old, damaged bloke, could end us all with just a stroke

of his pen.