Drone Operator Poem by Laura BrownLavoie

The drone note groans out low before the bagpipe starts.A ghost tone.Who's gone? Who's dirge is playing now?There's the drone of an engine flying low over the horizon.What's a plabe without a pilot? You can't look it in the eyes. If you shoot it nothing dies. It can kill but it ain't alive.
And the drone in a honeycomb. A stingless bee, he doesn't fly, just stays at home and remote controls.Yeah I've seen battle of course i've seen battle. I've never left Nevada but every day I see battle.A big screen.A live feed.And that's me on the trigger.Honeybee on the trigger.A stingless man. But wing it.
Things I've seen on that screen. It'll take the tones out of a man's voice.We'll make a drone of a man.Make a honeycomb home of a man's home.
Honey I'm home. Honeybee Queen I'm a drone. I'm in control.But remote.Can't get the laundry done.Can't get this twitch out of my thumbs.
These thumbs.These thumbs. Have never left my cubicle but there's blood all over them.This is not a video game.This is not a video game, but there are so many levels real and unreal.My desk is not a real cockpit.This screen is not a real windshield onto a warzone.The buzzing in my head is not the sound of engines.
But it's real radio contact and five different chats and a live feed streamin' at me.It's real men to defend over there.A real trigger under my thumb and real guns.And today I swear it's a real van full of villains.And I'm a man on a mission.And suddenly the planet is shrinking till there's no oceans or deserts or screens in between us.No state of Nevada.Just the long road in an Afghan province and I'm flying low with that van in my crosshairs.
I am there.I am all there.So I must have missed the instant message about the people inside.My desk is not a real cockpit but they were real people.23 real civilians.Though I didn't see them bleeding before the screen went black and I was back in Nevada.. Mine's a nine-to-five battle.So that day I just got back in my car for the same daily route.The videogame commute. And until I touched my wife.I wasn't sure what was real or the war or my life.
Honey I'm home.Honeybee Queen I still smell of clean clothes.But my brain is rotting like a foot in an army boot.There's a beehive between my eyes and a piper outside my window most nights, keeping me up when he breathes in and strikes up the drone.