There must be wars being fought out there

image by dsnake1

This is another poem about my NS days, which happened a long time ago. A silly poem, i guess. Sometimes, things got pretty quiet and boring and we would sit around playing cards or read a book, and generally bitching about the situation. When we were up to our ankles in mud in the field, we will be bitching about the situation. There was no other way.

This was one of those lucky, lazy evenings.
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There must be wars being fought out there


After dinner, we sat on the verandah outside our bunks
smoking, soaking the breeze
watching the day going down over our camp.

The perimeter was just metres away
and through the chain-link fence, the rusted concertina
sometimes we see iguanas, monitors and wild dogs.

Today we saw the snipers on night exercise again
getting down from their unimogs
cradling their night gear & sniping rifles.

We waved at them, they sulked at us,
poor bastards, they are going to feed mosquitos
and then they were gone, into the jungle, like ghosts.

My buddy leaned off the weathered planks
stretched his limbs like a yoga master
shouted fuck it! & lit another cigarette.

I wasn't sure what pissed him off
maybe the snipers, maybe the insects buzzing around us
or he was just thinking about his run-out date.

As if to offer moral support i said yeah fuck it
leaned back and took another cigarette from him
thinking it will be another humid night again.

The frogs and crickets are up and singing their songs
as the darkness descended over us
like a mailed fist.

i looked past the faint slice of moon
past the constellations, through the light years and
thought surely there must be wars being fought out there.


22.03.06
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