Knowing Warfare
By: John Grey
Until you've seen a cloud aflame
you haven't known warfare.
Or seen a ship split apart
somewhere in the stratosphere,
splatter against a mountainside.
Or witnessed people on the ground
rushing this way, that way,
unable to get out of the sky's way.
Inter–Earth wars were merely forays.
Our fighting men and women
against alien armadas
is a conflict worthy of
hell's angels versus heaven's.
And the aftermath is more
than the horror of a bloody battleground
of corpses.
The ashes of loved ones
can take days to find their way back home
If they're not blown off into space, that is.
Cities wiped off the face off the planet.
Populations decimated.
And nothing left to bury
but a speck of dust.
You haven't known warfare
until you no longer wish to know.
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