When World War III starts
I’ll be doing something meaningless
like reading or living and I’ll
watch the bastard on my phone
talking about “beautiful babies”
as he bombs beautiful babies
and I won’t call anyone
because this is just how the world is
now and I don’t get too attached
to people anyway in case they die
and I’ll watch the blue tint
of the window turning red and then
I’ll dig myself a cave to hide in
and read until I die of hunger or
nuclear fallout and if they try
to draft me I’ll find the nearest gun
and shoot myself because that’s
my second amendment right
because I refuse to acknowledge
a society ran by baby men
with fragile masculinity issues
because we were taught
how fun it is to kill
because people only matter
for their disposable bodies
because we love to see blood
pooling out of the body
because we’ve been made
to hate blood and fat and shit
and piss and so we want it exploded
out of bodies with as much fanfare
as possible and the bastard
didn’t want to accept refugees
he just wanted to see more bodies
explode because masculinity
has always been about exploding
bodies with bullets and dicks
and he’ll get to sip red
wine in Mar-a-Lago the bastard while red
blood explodes out of bodies
and reds and red hats shoot
each other and beauty is an illusion
that will be unmasked as our cities
are bombed and sky scrapers crumble
because we only hate war
when it destroys our own bodies
because we only hate death
when it’s our own deaths
because it’s only fun to kill
when we aren’t being killed
because people romanticize
violence because we love
the feeling of power but hate
the feeling of powerlessness
and we’ve been doing this
throughout history and we just
don’t stop we just keep killing
and we just keep finding newer better
ways to kill newer better ways to
wipe out our own species because
the dinosaurs waited on a meteor
to go extinct but we’re too impatient
for that and we love killing others
but hate it when others kill themselves
because that’s one less body
we get to explode for profit and power
and I’m willing to die without
ever having loved but I refuse to die
killing those who have loved ones
and I’m willing to die without
ever being happy but I refuse to die
killing those who dream of happiness
and so before World War III starts
I’m eulogizing the joy-bringing minutiae
of music and journals and books and
everything that made life worth living
and I’m cataloguing the people
who made my life worth living like
Daniel
Shannon
Suejee
Ben
Josh
and I think that’s enough for now
because I don’t know who or what will survive
but if I’ve learned anything from Marquez’s work
it’s that war erases the memory of beautiful things
and I don’t know if this poem will help me remember
what was once so beautiful
but at least it’s a start and at most
it’s a justification for our existence.