Until People Aren’t Part of It Anymore

Every Armageddon since Megiddo,
If not since much earlier butchery,
Has involved some recent technology

Handsomely amplifying violence,
And it’s not that the individual
Warriors and grunts have gotten more brutal

Nor any less. The people destroying
Each other remain as capable now
Of surplus cruelty as people then.

But whether composite bows or cannons,
Horses and chariots, satellites and drones,
Sooner or later, the new devices

Get pulled together for some massive clash
Demarcating boundaries of eras,
Which always feels like the end of the world

And never is anything close to it.
Human life-ways, shall we say, may implode,
But Armageddon’s just the next worst war.