the other day, as requested, I challenged my
battalion to think about methods or technology
that would essentially change the way we’d
slosh down a narrow road in the rain with
native drivers, view undisturbed artifacts
glowing on ancient altars and locate smoke

they came up with the idea of placing
at the end of a hall in a Chicago hotel
something along the lines of the following:
a nook with several senior citizens
depicting the genealogical tree of the Virgin Mary
and a large ceramic birds nest

to be honest, I didn’t think that it was the greatest
of starts, but then again we were trained to fight
not help brainstorm the soft heads of the civilian
top brass out of its collective armchair ass

the next day we got our orders that
we were going back and that is
exactly what we did

and we spent our first week
scrounging around all over again
for scrap metal

maybe next war
they’ll put a solder in charge of things
instead of the CEO of a pharmaceutical company