Bunker busters, daisy cutters, kill boxes, drones.

This is the vernacular of modern warfare,

it is a game of pecuniary stealth and precision

where weapons are fetishized and priced

like commodities in a market.

The war is sold on television

with charts, targets, backlit maps

and footage of dazed men and women

standing around the rim of a crater,

the camera hovering, disembodied.

We learn geography through war,

we learn a country’s grooves and divots intimately,

the lakes, the caves, the trade routes, the passes,

we trace the landscape as a hand

might gently caress a sleeping body,

and ultimately we learn patience:

how to kill democratically with bombs

and yellow food kits, how to be pragmatic

in our injury, and most importantly

how to spin policy to mask our revenge.