Unresolved

Jackhammer, smartest, whiz, IBM
machine on legs, applauded
by Senators, Presidents, me.

An acolyte, ambiguous
about our mission, I wanted
hard-eyed insight, wire-
rimmed command,
rationality – emotion no
substitute for reason.
Just five months after
I arrived, you left me
to discover what you knew already.

When you knew and didn’t say –
was it loyalty? The unified front?
Influencing from the inside?
Did you hope digging deeper,
one final jackhammer
would break through?
Fired,
did you wince with terrible
irony when the tunnels spewed
their wrath on us?

That’s when I began to get it,
our losing.
Doubting,
I stayed, my analyses
piling up – spending higher,
backpacked supplies unstoppable,
database filling with bodies.

Much later, in remembrance,
you said we got it wrong,
terribly wrong.
You probed for lessons which
I studied wondering
if eleven lessons
were enough?

I think
you were not a computer.
No machine weeps
into office curtains, walks disheveled
past the posts of power, loves
the son who protests
his dad’s war.

Still
our faces reflect
on that dark wall.