The Man Who Says He Hates War
The Man Who Says He Hates War by p.b. wells
there is a man who says he hates war.
he says it slow, like he is reading off the label of a bottle he cannot afford, trying to sound dignified while his tie cuts off the blood to his already empty head.
he says he hates war then starts licking his lips every time a map comes out.
he hates war but he wants Greenland, talks about taking it by force, if necessary, like a drunk uncle eyeing the neighbor’s truck.
he hates war but he wants to annex Canada, the quiet kid at the back of the class who never bothered anybody, and now this clown wants to slap a collar on him and drag him across the border for the hell of it.
he hates war but he talks about invading Mexico like he is ordering extra guac, easy, casual, as if cities do not burn the same way his toast does.
he hates war but Venezuela is on the menu too, another place he cannot spell, a country he thinks is only gasoline and brown faces that owe him something.
he hates war but he wants the Panama Canal back like a spoiled child screaming for a toy he already broke once.
he hates war so much he ordered the bombing of Syria, like it was a fireworks show, something to impress the neighbors.
he hates war so hard he ordered the bombing of Iran, a place he probably confuses with an athletics store, lights it up anyway because nothing says peace like high-tech bombers and drones.
he hates war so deeply he bombed Yemen, a starving country already on its knees, and then had the balls to shrug like he had dropped a napkin.
he hates war and that is why there are missile strikes and murders in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, just to show the fish who is the boss.
all this in less than a year, a calendar soaked in blood and hypocrisy, and he waddles out in front of cameras to tell us he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nobel. Peace. Prize.
I have heard some absurd shit in my time. I have watched preachers with cocaine on their collars, cops crying about fear with their knees on necks, CEOs weeping on television while firing ten thousand people through a memo.
but this, this is the top shelf of bullshit, the theatre of the absurd with overpriced popcorn, brought to you by a nation asleep at the wheel, snoring in the backseat while this bloated little driver aims the taxi at anything that moves.
thank you, America, for the fuckup of all fuckups, for dressing a thug in a suit and calling him a savior, for handing him the launch codes and a box of crayons and saying, go ahead, draw us a better world.
maybe the world, if it survives, will somehow, some way, someday find it in whatever tattered heart it has left to forgive you.
but tonight, out here in the cheap seats, watching the sky for the next peace-loving missile, it feels more likely that the universe itself is leaning back, lighting a cigarette, and laughing in your face.
https://www.deviantart.com/pbwells/art/The-Man-Who-Says-He-Hates-War-1271884915
