The Stuffed Men Poem by Gert Strydom

I

We are the men stuffed with what
society needs us to be
and when the government draws the strings
we jump; we obey against our own will,
we are the stuffed men who were taught
lethal skills to be turned on and off
like mere machines
to be unleashed against a enemy
consisting out of other men
and our lives, our own humanity
to the government is totally meaningless.

II

We were shaped and formed
and forced into military training camps
into a stark cohesion
where the individual soul perishes
and the group reigns supreme
where those who goes into eternity,
goes into death, knows us
as if we are some of them
where violence, killing is measured out
by great and sincere men
who like rag dolls are stuffed,
like marionettes have to obey
the commands given to them.

III

In dreams there are eyes that we avoid,
situations that reoccur,
the stark reality of living
after others have perished
and reliving through the slaughter of war
as if we were made for greater things
and have eternal difficulty to comprehend
sending men to their end
and voices, screams, events, people and places
stays with us
and the pain, the desolation
return in dreams
as if they are trying to draw us to the kingdom
where death reigns supreme.

IV

The battlefields remain,
where from burial trenches
images rise, where shot-out tanks
armoured cars and weapons of war
that were destroyed are nothing more
than rusting metal coffins
left in the wind and rain
and forever remain as testimony
of the cruelty of man
under the lonely stars of the Southern Cross
and these places are now left alone
are only visited by wild animals
digging up the bones of killed men
to gnaw on them.

V

But we are destined to return
in memories, in thoughts and ultra realistic dreams
to these valleys of death and desolation,
to the bushy plains
where corpses lie as skeletons
and eyeless gaze at the setting sun
as if these are the last places
where we meet with the effect
of the deeds that we were forced
to participate in
and in this world of sin
the stars of the Southern Cross
seems to give direction
to another world beyond
and not just to determining
how to go north.

[Reference: The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot.]