All Systems Green

All Systems Green
by Bryon Slack

Iran strikes Israel,
Israel strike Iran
and the infernal machine
continues to chug on.

Systems created since civilization’s dawn
in place so long we think they belong,
a list of names that yours
and mine will never be on
making all the choices for humanity
as if their authority
were imbued from beyond,
and we all keep acting
as if nothing is wrong.

A new scandal, a new list,
naming those amidst the oligarch throng
and we’re told to be sated
by their sacrificial pawns
and still the infernal machine
continues to chug on.

“How can this be?”
comes the lamentable song,
but the gears keep turning,
the system working as intended,
as it has all along,
protecting and lifting
those to whom it belongs.

Old money surnames,
their gold piles sat upon,
are made and then shielded
as the infernal machine
keeps chugging along,
but we’re the ones that made it
and designed it to be strong,
but that has never meant
that it cannot be undone.

If the people remember
that Power is a numbers game
and they’ve already won,
the infernal machine
will no longer chug on
but be disassembled
and repurposed
into something that the people
want to keep from now on,
instead of this contraption
of rot and of wrong.