I wrote this as a monologue for myself.  Haven’t performed it, not sure I will. It does express my sorrow and despair and disgust, really, at the increasingly militaristic direction things have taken. Really, isn’t there a better way? Really?

I admire the carrion eaters. I respect them. The ones that pick the bones of the dead. They do us all a great service, do they not? Imagine what the world would be if there weren’t the buzzards and the maggots and the carrion crows and all the little microbes that feed on death. Would there be any open ground left to stand on? Would we be walking on top of, I don’t know, a mile high pile of corpses? Just take the war dead, just that, everybody dies a natural death, their bodies go poof, gone, like Catholic Mary, zippo, straight off to heaven. But your war dead, the millions upon millions of soldiers and sailors, and babies and mothers and grandmothers, old men, young men, women of all ages, all the dead. Think about that pile getting higher and more staggeringly obscene by the second.

I think that would be a good thing. Really, I do. As a reminder, as a stark reminder. This is who we are, this is what we do. This is what we worship. You think not? You think this is too harsh? Then you, you, are deluded. You’re blindfolded. That’s why we need this pile, this statue of the uneaten dead so that you, and the millions like you, can see what you love, what you revere with your nationalisms and your closed borders and your voracious appetites for resources and your desire for control, control. This mounting avalanche of the dead is the idol you bow down to but never see because we have the cleaners to make it all sanitary for us. The cleaners and the gleaners to make it all go away. What was that that happened? That was for honor, that was for territorial integrity, that was for democracy, Islam, communism, a greater Russia, racial purity, a Crusade, a Holy War, not ever recognizing the oxymoron that that is.

The pile of dead would show you who you are. What we are, what we do. If we had to wade through these torn and twisted and shattered bodies on our way to work, grab a coffee, a hot date, maybe the going would be so tough it would slow us down enough to notice, hey, look at all the dead, all the lives cut short so I can gas my car, eat a cheap banana, get my dividend check.

Yeah. I admire the carrion eaters. They take care of us, they protect us from ourselves. Pity.