Since I was a boy playing
with army men
and tanks, flanking them the way I
saw in the WWII movies, like
George C. Scott when he yelled at
slow-witted soldiers who just didn’t
Understand that a show of
force has to overwhelm the
world with fear; to show
Vlad
And Kim and even Hassan that I
have more might and hardware than
they will ever have,
That I rule the world and
I’m not even showing my
nuke cards. After all, the
bombs bursting in air were
real bombs, not the kind the
kids go
To see with the pretty colors like
popsicles. I’ve got real power, and
I’m going to flaunt it.
If a road or two crumbles,
that’s a price an empire can
pay, and I can sell that as
creating another job too.
________
Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars grad. He also litigates. His poems have appeared in Poets Reading the News, Door Is A Jar, Raven’s Perch, Tuck Magazine, Poetry24, 2 Elizabeths, Main Street Rag and the Brooklyn Review.
Photo by Jonathan Cosens.
