The little boys with big dreams
Play dress up in khaki and black
Accessorize with glints of steel and shells.
They fasten prayers for safety around thier neck.
Days of pretend war and pretend violence are over.
Did they ever imagine looking into a real enemy's eyes?

Leaders sit high on thrones
Conducting the men and the machines
Both are just fodder for the beast of war
Who never stops being hungry.
The politics behind closed curtains
Promise that any man's life is worth victory,
Even if it destroys the fibers of a nation.

"This will not stand."

But we will fall, Sir.
The world may tremble at our super powers
But money and oil are never equal to heart and lungs.
To annihilate one's own country to topple another
Is the hidden slap in the face.
The only one to feel it are the orphans and the hungry,
Because victors rarely share door prizes.

Man after man fall onto the ground.
Race and religion and name and shadow
All fall away during the choke of battle.
Naked aggression can be stopped only with strength and guns.
When will people learn that
We are all made of carbon?

01/12/2004