I sit alone in your Gatling gun, Rosie Riviter spun suicide machine,

You're a jeep so desirous of ignition, your tires spin fruitlessly,

catapulting blood pink sand into the molten orange sunrise,

If headlights are your eyes then the sun is all they we see

See we our souls of gasoline sweating out wrinkled boot soles,

Diluting native soil, native blood

The scent chokes me but like you said

You love the smell of napalm in the morning.

 

I guess this is our apocalypse: now,

As I watch you, tires churn,

Twisting out mechanical Colonel Kurtz curtsies, kicking up bottomless dirt seas,

Oh, the horror, I'm face to floor, chained like another prisoner of war

Or like John McCain but a leftist wishing I'd left this before I was

Entrenched in sand

Soaked with salt

Coughing up bloodlust in a stream so steady I'm a flamethrower.

 

Moreover, I think you forget sometimes, I'm like you, Born to kill.

Animal mother, combat brother, you'd call me insane

You'd put me in a jacket so straight it's full metal against your stubborn gas pedal,

in a heartbroken State, military, industrial, and complex

Your silent face, hood upturned, headlights glaring,

Not sparing the souls in the crosshairs, driving over my regretful prayers for extra traction,

Exploiting my gut reaction to pull the trigger, go figure.

I still never expected as much from a machine like you.

 

Like the jungle you ripped my platoon apart,

Tightened the devil's hands around my heart,

To me you're Barnes,

To you I'm shards of a shattered man,

Repulsive enough for a body bag.

I’m too honorable for a Viking funeral bathed in the fire of this same sunrise.

I’ve got vocal chords, sinewy strips of whistling wind

You've got circuit boards, oily lips proud to have sinned.

Your words carry on their burgeoning backs death sentences

Your coat of ash crop dusted

As aerial highways blow my way.

 

This will be the final ride of your Valkyries

I hold dear the dreaded bayoneted rifle of rationale,

Foolishly sharpen her blade, fill her magazine,

My coffee is made with mud for beans and spit for sugar,

Natural cuisine of the environment without sweetener,

The soul-food of rent-a-center reapers like you and I.

Even now, the pot bubbles, understandably,

The Milky Way boiled last night as you scorched the earth beneath it,

Your Guns blazing, my arms grazing too close to the combat zone,

Wishing I could lick the silver spoon but like Fogerty said,  

I'm no fortunate son.

And I've never held to the rules but without them

Our love and your war are unextinguishable, no, indistinguishable,

Indistinguishable as us,

man and machine,

burning side by side, on a heavenly beach,

On a melted tangerine morning.