Father’s War

Came out of arrivals with something in his eyes that wasn't there

And you've been waiting for him beneath the white fluorescent glare

He throws his bags down, picks you up and he's spinning you around

Holding so tightly to you that you cannot even make a sound

This is your favorite memory of him, polished beautifully

You thought about it often both reflexively and dutifully

You didn't care who he was fighting or who he was fighting for

Only that your father finally'd come home from your father's war

And then eighteen years have passed, we're still in Afghanistan

With IEDs and armored Humvees, Burger Kings, and quicksand

And the folks that started up the fight are getting old and dying

And it's harder to remember just why the hell we're fighting

So they wrap the reasons in the flag, show films of 9/11

Every Sunday they remind us that all soldiers go to Heaven

It's a Heaven for Americans, the ones who please the Lord

Remember, even Jesus had to fight his Father's war

You meet a man you love who reminds you of your father

The way he used to be before his outlook got so dark

He sweeps you off your feet, carries you across the threshold

Of a new life, then he ships out; you are 22 years old

He calls you when he can from an undisclosed location

Then something happens and he's sent home, put on medication

He wakes up every night, an AR-15 in his chest; with your

Head upon his shoulder you can hear your father's war

But now laser-guided missiles beam snuff films of their immolation

Fossil fuel removal, architecture runs on radiation

Lines of code all stowed away deep inside a terabyte

An economic serfdom is conferred upon the non-compliant

You don't have to understand it all; that's okay, nobody does

It's hard for souls to comprehend the horrors they commit and thus

They do their work behind a wall, behind a screen, behind a door

So they don't see what he saw when it was your father's war

So he'll finish off his tour of duty in an office park in Maryland

Facilitating drone strikes on the border towns of Pakistan

This is all that he's told you; it's amazing he's said anything

But you've seen it on the cable news, the hospitals and weddings

And at first you think he'll be alright, he'll come home from work each evening

But he's no longer all love and light, he's silent or he's seething

And you love him more than anything but you've seen this all before

And in every way that matters this is still your father's war

It's still your father's war

It's still your father's father's war

And it's his father's war

And his father before father's war

And this is how it's gonna be

Right down through generations

War improving only on its cruelties with innovation

So we stack the dead atop the dead, like flowers on cut roses

And prove that we can take revenge and slaughter without notice

And have everything we want, and with what's left we'll wipe the floor

So maybe it's just easier to fight our father's war