signing the dotted line

i’ve known individuals who never
signed the dotted line---
they never took the $20,000 sign up bonus
&
they never pretended,
lying to themselves beforehand,
that when they were
enlisted,
that it would somehow be “peace time,”
whatever that means.

i’ve known folks who have worked at a
gas station for years to pay off the bills that they
could have easily caught up on,
had they had the salary promised them,
if they had become
professional
hired
killers.

and i am well aware that there are those
that say that they had no other way to go to college,
than to join the military.

and i am well aware that these scumbag recruiters
prey on the poorest neighborhoods,
often seated right at the bottom of the stairwell of a
subway exit.

but i just don’t have any
sympathy for you,
if you have signed that dotted line---
because when you do that,
you are saying that
someday,
somewhere,
you won’t have a problem killing someone whom you have
never
met---
having stolen them from their family,
having taken from them all that was life,
for the purpose of
the
state---
you may even be sitting in an office in
arizona,
as i write this,
“manning” a drone,
that has entered any one of our prospective
targets (victims),
in order to beat them senseless
&
rape their land of their natural
resources.

if you come back & they hail you,
you still signed the dotted line.

if you come back in a box,
you still signed the dotted line.

you are a hired killer the minute that pen hits the paper &
no amount of praying or
“good deeds” when you get home,
will rectify doing so.

i have so much more respect for those of us that
work our asses off every day in a country with a decrepit
education system, no universal health care, 14+ million
unemployment, etc. etc.---
because we
stick
it
through---
we will never try and convince ourselves that even the
possibility
of killing someone else
or helping destroy another people’s country
will somehow
solve our own
problems.