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a meeting
of geese
wouldn't abet
their cold
and stranded
with nonchalant
only to
harry this
land with
ware that
their untold
riches could
indeed  tangle
my heart
here wreched
winter blew
my nose
Canada is a land of riches
JDH Jun 2017
Watch down the meadows here, of half a sight of
slaughter, and stick down these rows furled lazy
with the grass of fair days and stilted with colours
of May. And see no horns, rooted like the children's
graves, all turned a pallid colour. And bathe now in
the sun of stilted memories gone to wind.

For no heads turn as sirens on the clock here, filled with
madness of spinning rocks on the hour. Nor any men
dressed as men without eyes, should we skinned heads
have to suckle death from their guns. No: now these Trees
had hanged the other way, turning from sights of sorted
mass into waking graves, and to wash in perfumes hazy
as the night sky, and rotten as anaemic lungs.

But watch down the meadows now, through fields of huts
and silence‒ for the pasture of death looks nothing like
violence. Where, upon a ravaged place, a Lark lands as
an infant would, and tenderly drifts, faint into innocent
shawls, damp with poison mud. But for what cause do
these blind bullet heads sink lower than flesh, and when
the Sun next rises, all shall be put to rest.
After visiting the Auschwitz Birkenau camp, and hearing a Polish survivor... how the days of death seemed to have faded on a summers day. It seemed a shell of the horrors that had been. Only a dark imagination could fulfil the past.
Nick Lipman Jun 2016
I am standing in the spot where my family almost died
Here, in this land
All of life turned gray
Not the temporary gray of a rainy day
Not the gray of a fading photograph
No
The gray like ash
Or the ashes of the fallen
Gray like the plumes of smoke
Billowing out from the gas chambers
Standing in this spot
I feel connected
A pull
A throwback to my roots

I feel so… somber
Like I can see that day
January 27th 1945
My family members
Or what was left
Some of the 6,000 that were left
Staring and wondering
Is this real?
Or
Is this just another delusion brought on by hunger
Or are we free?
They told us we were free back in the day
But no
We walked for 40 years into the hands of a new oppression
Into a stereotype
Into the **** of a joke
Into the law offices and bank teller of the world

Go back a little further
Back into Poland
Before 1945
Think 1944
I know what a needle and ink on skin feels like
But I cannot imagine it by force
Forced away from the laws of my religion
A name, reduced to a number
24601
No
More like A-98288 on a forearm
No
I can feel the burn
In my eyes and in my lungs
Not from the gas and the filth
But from the pain of generations of jews and others labeled as different
As not pure

I feel the pull
The connection
Severed
My grandmothers 14 siblings reduced to 3
Back to 1945
I feel…
Empty
My existence no longer focused on minute by minute survival
I feel…
A flutter
Of anxiety, of pain, of…
Hope…
Brought on by these men in uniform not seated in hate
Hope that we might live
Hope that the end is here!
But not the end that we have prayed for

Fade into color
I am standing in the spot where history almost erased me
And I remember all the years of oppression
And I can see how it continues
And I can see how it needs to change

I am standing in front of my peers
Asking
No
Begging you to see what I see
I am begging for change
I am begging for peace
Blinking Nose May 2015
Each death, a searing lesion in my soul
I wonder if you are alive, trapped
Among these treacherous walls

Are you starving too?
Desperate for home
Tired of all the spilling tears
And the sight of broken people?

I think I may have seen hell
But if I should pass by heaven
God will need to bawl and beg
For my forgiveness
John F McCullagh Jan 2015
Today three hundred gather recalling to the World its’ shame.
They’ve come once more to Auschwitz on a more comfortable train.
The youngest, in their Seventies, were children at the time,
when Russians overran the camp and exposed the Nazis’ crimes.
If you were gypsy Gay or Jew incarcerated there
They starved and worked you unto death-
Your grave was in the air.
The walks were paved with bits of bone from those who died before.
These lives and deaths were cataloged for the ***** Chancellor.
All who remain now gather for this last and final time,
to testify to their suffering and rebuke those who deny.
* * ** *

On this day in 1945 Russian troops liberated Auschwitz. This anniversary marks the final time that living survivors are expected to attend( the 70 year anniversary), In another ten years few if any could be expected to make the trip.
Life Jan 2015
Would you believe me to be death?
I guess it makes sense
For this reality, truly is hell

But I am a cheater of death
So here I stand;
Amidst the stink of burning corpses,
Dead eyes of starring, children and women,
Alive.
Oh, but how I wish I was dead.

Now, 80 years after,
The smell of burned carcass,
Still clings to everything I touch
"Arbeit macht frei" (German pronunciation: [ˈaɐ̯baɪt ˈmaxt ˈfʁaɪ]) is a German phrase meaning "work makes (you) free". The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of **** concentration camps during World War II, including most infamously Auschwitz.

— The End —