The assassination order is given while coffee cups sit on desks
in a whitehouse room.
The target is chosen based on intelligence-often-wrong.
They have his cellphone number to track him down
and the drone is ready in the sky.
The young soldier slept badly last night–he remembered the last strike. The kids.
Collateral damage. A cost-of-war they told him.
This somehow didn’t satisfy. They gave him antidepressants.
All would be fine.
But it was not.
The whitehouse staff, who drank good coffee
were the judge and jury but there was no trial
and he was the executioner growing more and more unwilling.
Had the target let someone use his cellphone–his wife, his brother.
And the missile doesn’t kill just one-he had seen that. He did it.
Now he was having coldsweats as he entered the modern kill box
with the comfortable chair.
Why are we doing this. Well of course terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.
But now, was he one too.
The kids were innocent.
In civil wars is this our business anyway
We shocked and awed them with our might.
Might not they be angry.
He didn’t go in that comfy pilot chair that day
He just said no. He would have hell to pay
but maybe a better hell where he could sleep.
(c) Richard Greve
