The Toys of Boys
I recall the days,
when I was just a little boy.
I played with men like GI Joe
and other manly toys.
We had our little cavalries
we’d line up in a row.
We’d play our little battles.
We thought that’s how they’d go.
We also played with Tonka Trucks
and command them on the ground.
Our voices made machine-like tones,
of how we thought they’d sound.
But then I started growing up--
those toys were put aside.
I went to school, my interests grew.
Society taught me pride.
I planned my life and days ahead—
Seeds planted in my mind.
Of what I thought would come in life.
Of what I thought I’d find.
And then one day a war began.
I knew I had to go.
Some others were not coming back.
Me....I didn’t know.
There I was a nice young man,
but in a foreign land.
I was moved from innocence
into a fighting man.
I played with guys I called my bro’s,
but playing wasn’t fun.
On many days my only hope
was for another rising sun.
Our cavalries weren’t little men
from simple plastic molds,
but living flesh and dying flesh—
their hands I had to hold.
The Tonka Trucks were bigger now—
their color: army green.
I would have liked to silence them--
their noises made us seen.
We fought each day to save a land
from things that had gone bad.
We held our heads up in the sky,
for the pride we thought we had.
We lost a lot of men those years—
the men we called our bro’s.
Our battles were not won against
the Charlies, the gooks, the foes.
Then luck allowed me to come home,
when others couldn’t come.
The men we lost in that long war
came to an eerie sum.
Now I am an older man--
the memories just as clear.
The whines and cries that voice at night,
are dreams reliving fear.
I play with bro’s I call my friends.
We drink to days gone by.
And every now and then we see
those days that make us cry.
Our Tonka Trucks are family vans,
or jeeps, or plain old cars.
We try to live a normal life,
but our thoughts drift back so far.
The battles that we have today,
are in our own minds now.
Our families and the ones we love
can’t help—they don’t know how.
And so we hurt the ones we love
as we battle our haunting minds.
We battle the loss, we fight the fear,
we battle the doubts of pride.
So now I wonder if luck was there,
the day I came back here.
Or would the pain been briefer—less—
had death extinguished tears?
Because each and every day I live
with battles in my mind,
with memories and haunting thoughts
I cannot put behind.
I stand and look up at this wall--
at names of men we lost.
Tears roll down my manly face
for the lives the war had cost.
I pay a tribute to these brave men
as I stare at this granite wall,
but in the end I wonder if
we all took the same bad fall.
Oh yes, I am alive today—
these other men are not.
But the pain I feel for their loss,
makes me wish that I’d been shot.
© 1998 Nancy Wegner
All Rights Reserved