What’s become clear is that
your enemies have the easy stuff
figured out and countered and

that’s at least in part because
you yawp like a puppy instead of
growling or better still coming at them

in silence with cunning 
and the strongest weapons you have
loose and swinging in your hands.

Your best bet
is to keep your mouth shut,
mostly. Don’t expose
the back of your throat

where your best weapons 
hang — not the throwaways
you store on the tip of the tongue
but the sharpest edges,
the thickest batons,
the rifles with the laser sights.

You won’t listen.

You will die pretending
we are not at war.

We are not there yet,
you will say, even as you fall
bleeding into the sand.

We are not there yet,
you will say, as you die.