By: Mike Hastie <hastiemike@earthlink.net>
Bring Me Home
When I was a boy I played with toy soldiers.
When these toy soldiers were killed, they fought
another battle in my imagination.
When I became a man, and became a soldier,
soldiers were not reborn when they were killed.
When I came home from war with my horrible
pain and disillusionment, I wonder if my boyhood
days with toy soldiers had anything to do with me
not facing reality.
I never thought I would have to face the face of death.
After all, my toy soldiers always went back in the box,
to fight another day.
Death and dying was never part of my reality.
Now I'm left with coffins filled with buddies,
stories that will never be shared.
I wish I had never played with toy soldiers.
I wish I had learned to cry like my sisters.
Maybe I would have never been filled with fear
and anger, always ready to go to war to protect
what was so bottled up inside of me.
War toys.
Death toys.
Why can't I ever be happy?
What am I so fearful of?
Why do I feel I have to protect myself all of the time?
Guns, guns, guns!!!
Why didn't countless adults tell me the truth?
Why did they abuse me everyday with the lie?
Why didn't they tell me the truth about WAR?
Why did I have to find out the death way, that
WAR stands for, Wealthy Are Richer?
Why did the churches in
WAR spelled backwards is RAW.
I did not serve in
I served Big Business in
WAR spelled backwards is RAW.
The RAW truth that was buried so long ago.
That is why boys play with toy soldiers.
The horror of war is covered up with glorification.
Another generation is being groomed for glory.
More innocent civilians are killed than soldiers.
I don't recall killing innocent people with my toy soldiers.
Why that is against my childhood beliefs.
But, the ambush is always the same when soldiers come home,
when they realize that WAR stands for, Wealthy Are Richer.
It is a truth that will destroy many.
That way, they will never be able to bear witness.
Betrayal is the lethal dose that kills in silence.
But, I have a secret, that the government does not know.
It is not what we experience in life that destroys us.
It is our inability to feel the pain behind the experience
that destroys our lives.
That is what my elders never taught me.
Because they could never face their own pain about war.
Mike Hastie
November 5, 2006
Richard Hastie