I wonder what the dead of war would say, if they stayed, past their demise,

and wheeled around the fading battlefield like invisible kites of hot regret.

I wonder what they would say the hundreds of millions slaughtered by swords and bombs and guns,

vaporized into shadows on broken walls, ground into jam beneath the curled feet of tanks.

I wonder what they would say to us.

I wonder what they said to themselves,

in their last moments,

before their eyeballs bled from the crushing weight of war

descending upon their lives.

I wonder if all the words that herded them like bitter, vacant shepherds,

off the cliff edge of death, I wonder if those words evaporated,

just before their lives did, all the words like

patriotism, nationalism, religion, country, soldier.

I wonder if all of the words that wrapped around them like a strangling anaconda

mummy tape flew away from them before they died and revealed only the sand, the dead sand of non-existence.

I wonder if they realized, just before they died, that they were going to go the way of the words

that led them to their graves, the words that did not exist, that made them not exist.

The countries that do not exist.

The patriotism, that is, to live on bended knee to violent masters.

The class that does not exist, that led them to lay down their lives for nothing,

for rulers emptier than the words that hung them.

And I wonder what they would say, if they could still fly above the ruin of the world that smashed them, and that they smashed.

...