Poem 2: “Cold War Shells of Men”

“The Cold War Shells of Men”

The spooks all bought their hats from the same hatter.

No one seemed to mind he’s the same guy.

In Virginia, his name was John: as Mid-Atlantic as it gets.

In the luxury shop of the Kremlin, his name was Vasiliy.

Neither side seemed to know that he’s the greatest spy of them all.

He has one hell of a logistical setup, being everywhere all at once.

He may or may not be the same guy, and he may or may not be a spy for the other side.

Regardless, it doesn’t matter.

To the Soviet & Stateside spooks alike, every man around them was the same.

In each and every one of their minds, all the men surrounding them had all become agents and assassins of a standard, double, and triple kind.

All the scenarios have been played out, multiplied by the number of men in the room at that given time.

A sea of cancelling decisions flowing across a multitude of men’s minds.

It comes down to the numbers really.

Even pairs or lone, odd numbers of decisions tell most whether an individual is with or against the cause.

Few kept track of what that cause actually was, and all the while, the number crunchers slammed the keys of their 24-megabyte “supercomputers,” concerned with finding the number “1” or the number “0.”

Paths lead to other paths of an endless kind or lead to nowhere at all.

Words held no meaning, or could topple a third world country. Not even the speaker knew the difference.

Codes of honor and codes of encryption: some were convinced they were the same.

No man knew where he stood.

Is a man then still a man?

Perhaps some men liked it that way.

For some men like it hot, and some men like it cold. Both sides like their wars cooked the same way.

Some men let their blood boil on open battlefields, and some men want to play a game of chess that seemingly never ends.

A game of chess that’s played in circles in which the only way to win is to make the opponent believe you’ve lost.

A shell of a winner indeed.