War Machine Lullaby - Voiceover

The words are all mine. The voiceover carrying them isn't, you are hearing Suno.

the accountants have clean hands
look at them
shuffling papers while your pension checks
bounce
while retirement bleeds out
like a gut-shot deer in October
and they point
there
over there
some brown country you can’t find on a map
some threat they’ve focus-grouped into your living room
your father’s 401k disappeared the same year

you do the math

while the CEO’s daughter
gets another [high] horse

another summer house while your
money that used to buy groceries
money that used to mean something
turned into smoke
into the burning edge of a drone strike
eight thousand miles from home

and we’re supposed to believe in coincidence
in the way markets just happen to need saving
right when the oil fields need liberating
right when the rare earth minerals under desert dirt
start looking like the only thing between US
and economic collapse

convenient

the TV says democracy
but the satellite images show strip mines
the newspapers say freedom
but the quarterly reports say extraction rights secured
your cousin came back from Fallujah
with his hands shaking
with something behind his eyes
that wasn’t there before
something, someone
that looks like the photographic negative of trust
he doesn’t talk about what he guarded
what compounds
what convoys of what
moving where
for whom
but Halliburton’s vice president bought
a third yacht that year

again: do the math

they wage war like money laundering
like shell corporations
like offshore accounts
that clean blood into dividends
that wash screaming into quarterly growth
that transform children into acceptable losses
into collateral damage into the price
of doing business
and under it

under it

the files they won’t unseal
the flight logs to islands
the names in black books
the basements of the powerful
where innocence goes to die
while lawyers draft NDAs
they burn Baghdad to hide the basement in Georgetown
they level Gaza to hide the ledger
they point at terrorism while their hands
move under the table
while they touch
what should never be touched
while they take
and steal
and appropriate
your friend’s daughter joined the National Guard
for college money

and now she’s
██████ doing ██████ because
██████ told her ██████ was
the enemy

but student loans don’t forgive themselves
and somebody’s got to hold the gun
while somebody else makes the choice
that puts her there
holding it

it’s never their sons

they wage war and call it intervention
they wage war and call it peacekeeping
they wage war and call it necessary
they wage war because
the alternative is investigation
is transparency

is someone finally asking

where did the money go
who was on that plane
what happened to those children
show us the photographs

so they light another fire
bomb another city into geology
into the archaeological record
of empire
of extraction of bodies
of how civilizations eat their young

it's not really a choice
it's hostage negotiation

and we call this freedom
we call this opportunity
we call this service

Let’s call it what it is:
feeding the young to the machine
that keeps the old in power
that keeps the rich in champagne
that keeps the files locked

every war is a distraction
every bomb is a magician’s hand
drawing your eye away from the real trick

look over there

while we rob you blind
while we touch what we shouldn’t
while we take what isn’t ours
while we turn your children into shields
for our crimes

and you
and me
and we
we’ve got to stop believing
the map they drew
the borders they invented
the enemies they appointed
we’ve got to stop believing
we’re separate from this
clean from this
innocent in this

the phone in your hand is part of the war
the gas in your tank is part of the war
the vote you cast is part of the war
the silence you keep is part of the war

and isn’t that the hardest thing:
seeing how the strings run through
our own hands

how we’re not just
watching the puppet show
we’re part of the apparatus

and we stay here
in the machine
feeling the strings
cutting our palms
and calling it
unpleasant

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That’s all from me, your turn to ask What if.

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Thank you for reading my work! Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and dystopias when I’m paying attention.

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I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

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