By any other name

A war by any other name would wound as deep,
The art of language crafted by greed
Winces under words of enigmatic detail
And shrugs in vanquished deceit.

An 'illegal combatant', a 'terrorist, an 'enemy of state'
All men recruited to fight tyranny and trained to answer to their god,
No more misguided, violent, 'evil' than the mechanistic matrix
Stretched gaunt across a twisted, patriotic frame of wrong and Right.

An axis, named in haste, 
Pivots and magnifies despair
As in its ebb the shadow trails
Chaotic grammar of new day.