The Toll of War

No bugles call the troops to charge.

No bayonets gleam in the morning's raw light.

The pilot, a cipher, sips lukewarm coffee.

Sees the world through a screen, in stark green and white.

With a joystick's soft, unthinking shift,

A wedding becomes a smudge of flame.

A drone's low hum, a disembodied gift,

Of death that carries no face, nor name.

In another room, a keyboard clicks,

A virus blooms in the digital dust.

The market falters on its nervous ticks;

A fortress crumbles from a stolen trust.

Meanwhile, in a country far from home,

The soldier patrols in a heat so deep,

That memory and nightmare start to roam,

And crawl beneath the skin while he sleeps.

He remembers the blast, the blinding white flash,

The dust in the mouth, the terror, the grief.

He touches a name, and time turns to ash;

There is no rest, no relief in sight.

The casualties are not just found on the wire.

They are the children who play in the crater.

The wife who waits by a muted fire.

The man who lives, but only feels later.

The leaders confer in their polished chairs,

And speak in words that sound precise and bland.

While lives are traded like software shares,

And silence reigns over a burning land.