Poem for the Day - HMD 2013

To mark the tragedy of the German Holocaust and the other acts of cruelty across the world, I have produced a poem for the occasion:

September

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939 (1939)

I

My Dearest,

                        When I lathered myself in a bar of flesh,

I thought of you, in those fleeting suds of small white

specks of times we had in the discothèques, embellished

in gold and the titbits we told when the men in black came in sight.

The morning after, standing here as I did then, cursing the rise

of a new morn, we banished away the ghouls and goblins, the dice

rolling, striking snake eyes no matter what. A knock on the door,

the Infernal Serpent stares for a moment through your blue

windows and salivates I’ll take you.

Like I said before, I later myself in that bar of flesh,

and think to myself, beauty really is skin deep.

II

When life never felt really certain and as my

troubles needed to be forgotten,

I could always count on you sweet Grand,

to say life really is never so rotten.

But when I hold steady the frame the still life

of an age gone by, I wondered

Why Grandma, what lovely locks without end here?

Her crown now – shaven, worn. A shallow desert.

She said:

Yes dear, and all the better it was for the world to see.

In a different time, a vintage wine lost to

tyrants of Destiny.

I regarded the loss of generations ago

and wanted to ask again, until

she had told the unseen nobleman

her face was her bespoken asset.

Then I cannot marry you, he spoke.

it was okay, for it’d already ended

when my fair locks had been broke.

III

On the first day of fall,

I felt the cold absence

of a hazy blue sky, with no call

from now birds flying askance.

The band played no welcome,

solid chambers empty of their cries

and the roll call that said the worm

will be there for Sunday worship, lives

dominated by the lies they told.

I believed in that once and even under

their lock and key, I didn’t turn cold.

But when the last trees shed asunder,

I’ll still count my blessings that I’ve

forgotten that dawn will ever arrive.