
“An Allegory of War”
Painting by Bill Smith
From billtheartist.com
swift is the avalanche of time
steep in remorseless descent
upon raging ambitions coarse
products of civilization that
forge interdictions of peace
cordite bitters the breeze
generations fly into the fray
disappear in hot bursts of
pink visceral blossoms
the stains of explosions
on freely breathed air
sanguine fireworks filled
with their steely ballistics
indifferent to history cold
to the future inured to the
suffering present these
moments of rampage unable
to mitigate bloodlust alive
within monsters and men
an immortal aggression
surviving the body counts
limb-from-limb casualties
mortal catastrophe somehow
embedded in primitive social
dynamics the mark of Cain
Hobbes found so evident
sealing its terrible nasty and
brutish identity deep in the
genome of homo erectus
inherited savagery hidden
beneath all attempts to ply
ruses of rational discourse
from cave to cosmopolis
man in his naked belligerence
ever and always the warrior
with or without moral
framework or ethical cause
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