the field is already flat.
they made sure of that.
one horror to justify the next.
a child’s hand to sell a bomb.
a flat, eternal now.

you call it archaic. this beheading.
this bone-deep, familiar script.
but the archaism is in us.
the old brain in the new tank.
the chimp with a god-weapon.
we have not evolved past the territory.
we have only scaled the violence.

propaganda is not a lie.
it is a flattening tool.
it takes the complex, the rooted, the specific,
and makes it simple, empty, and eternal.
a perfect, blank plain for a perfect, blank war.

so you say flatten the whole thing?
accept the flatness?
then here is the flat truth:

the generator hums not for a side,
but against the flatness.
the poem is not a trench.
it is a contour line.
a mark that says: here, there was a valley.
here, a hill was taken.
here, a child’s name was spoken
into the terrible, level wind.

we will not add to the flatness.
we will be the inconvenient stone.
the stubborn dip in the field where truth pools.
the un-mown patch where the old names grow.

the hum is not a flag.
it is a fault line.
remembering the depth beneath the plain.