War Games

The incomprehensible frivolity of those who deem it enjoyable and sporting to make a game of killing and suffering!

Such acts and attitudes are symptoms of a horridly sick society indeed. To make a sport of the tragedies of mankind is to demonstrate a madness of the vilest kind on earth, worse than that which we find in asylums because those out and about, free to do as they please, are pleased to mimic the worst there is, though they are judged by the rest of society to be sane and responsible. The judges are as ill as the judged, if they find no fault or harm in such behavior.

War games? War games? War games!

Play, everybody, play!

And play the dreaded things that one never plays again

When the real appears.

In all its horror and confusion,

The incredible, the imagined takes its form from nowhere,

But not from nothing.

Frolicking souls, restless souls, selfish souls,

Dull, simple, foolish and ghoulish;

Shoot and kill! Play the game without the blood in sight,

Though the blood already gushes forth

With its life spilled to the ground.

While they play and rejoice in mock victories,

Storm clouds swiftly creep.

Even the rain spatters to warn but none take care

And none suspect that the rain is red.

Now they say, “Better red than dead” until they say

“I wish I were dead.”

Now they only pretend, like children,

Running and laughing, not watching,

Until they fall into the strong hands of a stranger,

One of whom they have heard,

One of whom they have talked and laughed.

Suddenly, the reality.

Children, play your games.

Soon there’ll be no games to play, and

The memory of them will willingly fade away,

But the reality of them will stay

To exact the price for playing. (Ecclesiastes 11:9-10)

IF YOU CANNOT TAKE SOCIETY NOW, HOW WILL YOU COPE WHEN IT TAKES YOU?

Lethbridge, July 20, 1984