Arm deals and more arm deals, that’s all I see.

Calibres change, the type of artillery

Changes, the game players grey and go and

Are replaced by darker capillary

With greater thirst for bleeding enemy

And with more dangerous artillery.

 

Deadly toys in the hands of eager youth,

Intended for warding off intruders:

Scaring them with heaps of artillery

So that they would harder prepare soldiers

If they should covet and desire to loot.

In their minds they have peace in their brooders.

 

But to brood over unused firepower

While only playing with blanks on dummies

Kindles unquiet thirst only blood can quench

Kills empathy for sonless war mummies,

And in blasts of gun smoke the youth’s flower

Drowns its thirst in the thud of fall’n bodies.

 

(c) Nyonglema