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JGuberman Aug 2016
Tell me mother
as you kiss your baby
that no one died today,
that no one was a martyr
or a hero,
and that all who now sleep will awake,
and that the sirens that now sound
will be the only death recorded,
and that the drivers without cars,
and the cars without drivers,
will each find a partner
for as long as they need,
like the Palm Doves in the park.

Tell me mother,
that as long as you
love your baby
all mothers will love theirs
and no mother will again mourn
the foreheads without a kiss
and the kiss that has no forehead
to receive it.
written on a bus in Herzliya, Israel 22 April 1990 (Holocaust Memorial Day).  On this day air raid sirens ring out across Israel at which point all traffic comes to a halt for a couple minutes. Drivers exit and stand next to their cars and pedestrians stop in their tracks and stand at attention while the sirens wail.

It should be noted that this poem had originally been written as a piece for Holocaust Memorial Day, though as the 20th Century bled into the 21st, it is clear that mothers and children all over our world are suffering untold miseries be they refugees escaping tyranny or victims of civil strife or war. This therefore is dedicated to all mothers and children.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2022
i'm at it again, ******* to pictures of
naked women without climaxing...
i have to... i'm gearing up for an hour's
worth of the "***** deed"...
Michaela is going back to Romania
on the 28th of this month and
i have a Wembley shift on the 16th...

my god... i went to the shop to buy some ice-cubes
a whiskey and some pepsi...
and who was in front of me in the queue?
a ******* Rolls-Royce of a woman: my type...
my mythological type of woman... foreign...
i'm guessing German... blonde hair: but not albino,
ergo mingling with tinges of a brunette,
older than me, by i'm guessing at least 10 years...

definitely German... she was buying
(from what i can remember) cat food and beer...
i looked at her hands... no ring... i abhor jewellery...
my parents thought it would be cute for
a ****** boy to don a signet on the pinky finger
like the English aristocracy... i don't do rings...
even if i were married i couldn't wear a ring on my finger...
no chance! but this was a Rolls Royce of a woman...
suitor to my frame... big... well: not fat...
just: womanly: a womanly woman...
the type that might serve you beer in a tavern...

i lost my mind... certainly not a geisha type...
a bit like Michaela last night... oh...
she was plump alright: i really plucked a plum yesterday...
usually i have problems ******* within an hour...
Khadija sort of bypassed the ****** on her own whim...
Michaela also: but she asked me to pay her extra...
£30 for ******-less oral and £40 for the full deal...

i was only there for half an hour...
all that walking around drinking cider around the brothel
rubbing my groin to get the party started:
plus her frame? she looked like what artists or
men in general found attractive in the Renaissance:
plump women... i knew i was going to ******* pretty
quickly... an unfathomable force came along
an unfathomable object... sparkles...

with past girlfriends i was such a man-*****...
ooh... need to satisfy her blah blah...
Ilona even noted that not many men are like that:
she noticed my back-then ****** library:
i started reading that infamous book The Game by
that some other pick-up artist...
i soon found that pointless... started reading
Tantra... more useful...
but yesterday? i was a man...
            30 minutes: i heard women like quickies, no?
after oral she asked me, what position?
doggy... missionary is so ******* back-breaking...
but i wanted to look at her fat ***...
no... it wasn't premature *******...
it was: i just finished a shift...
i was out of the house for over 12 hours...
i was hot, sweaty... i started drinking...
forget getting something off my chest to a psychologist
or a priest... that third P...

it was blissful... it felt like the heat-wave was
over and it started raining: somewhere...
second time though? it won't be like that...
i'm already practicing keeping the *******
prolonged... it will take two or three days
or just stroking an ******* without actually *******...
but this Rolls Royce a blonde just now...
a full woman... a woman's woman...
feline eyes dabbed with the least amount of
mascara: a woman that was single...
but looked like she was catered to by a harem
of men... well: a harem of eunuchs and some sheikh...
at least: in my eyes...

a woman that could be the antithesis of cubism,
for sure... she could stand next to a Picasso
and i could tell you: that! that's the antonym!

i couldn't possibly behave like the noble swan
in monogamy... i also couldn't do whatever is "classical"
these days about what dating was about
in 1950s America...
no chance of that happening... this is Europe, after all:
we do things differently here...

- well that was a first, i never thought i would be
directing a bus driver about where to go,
his first shift: on the 86 bus route:
i was picking up a bicycle wheel from Bicycle King
of Chadwell Heath: one of my spokes
snapped from the heat... thankfully as i was about
to do a trip... anyways...
he turned around and opened his cabin door
and asked me to direct him... so i did...
this exit on roundabout x... that exit on roundabout y...
i remember the number 5 route back in Poland
ever since i kept to this comforting thought:
i wish to become a bus-driver once...
which routes? 86 is grand... 103 would be even better...

- Michaela? after we finished our "*****" deed
we just chatted... smoked cigarettes and drank
the whiskey i brought with me...
she asked me: do you smoke? yep...
so i asked her: do you drink? yep...
15 girls in total in the brothel...
2 Polish girls, 1 Turkish girl... 2 Russian girls...
the rest? Romanian...
what time do you finish? 5am...
what then, go back home and sleep?
no... i work in a hospital in central London:
i administer medication to patients...
i like showcasing my hygiene...
shower prior... washing my genitals after...
no... of course i wouldn't shower after having *** with
her: i want her body's perfume to stay with me...
she didn't shower after either...
like-minded ***-maddened people...

i love certain women too much to listen to western:
WASPS (western anglo-saxon protestant
feminists type): let's just have fun or let's just die...
i'm not coming near that "thing" without a yard-stick!
i'm serious!
            secretive "******" / nuns...
          i'm going to have a hard time ruling my secrets
under ol' king Charlie... i'm finishing off ol' Lizzie
reign with a crescendo... dearest Lizzie:
it has been a blast... thank you: god save the queen!

- stopped off at the Moon & Stars at Romford...
the smoking was packed so i sat on the public bench
with half-a-Guinness and smoked clinging to my wheel...
finishing my cigarette i implored fellow appreciators
of the brew if i could leave my stump of filter in their
ashstray:
- oi! mate! looks like someone stole your bike!
you're only left with a wheel!
- ha ha ha... pause... but it's a unicycle now!
- ha ha...

i'm starting to surprise myself more and more...
the alles-mensch...
i'm returning to people like i first met them
back in school...
the best way i can: as a chameleon...
i'm Matthew A with some... i'm Matthew B with others...
Matthew C with another group...
and they come to me like i'm some *******
priest, some advocate...
hey! if Walt Whitman could celebrate himself
i'm going to celebrate myself:
i'm done with feeling **** about myself:
i'm going to drink, i'm going to dance: to groove...
once upon a time there were serious leftist policies
and ideologies: that tied into an alternative
economic policy: but under the same yoke
of communism? it's ******* posturing...
i'm not going to take these people seriously: esp. if they're
coming from America...
people should know better...

- two songs...
      lyrically? run to the hills by iron maiden
and midnight oil's the dead heart are the same...
white man this white man that...
Poland was cut up in three by three great empires...
then it was resurrected and then it was conquered
by **** Germany and Soviet Russia...
then it was a Soviet satellite state...
hmm: why did the English invent cricket
and rugby and football?
a bit like that fortune that met Japan when a Mongol
fleet was met with a hurricane...
yawn: the Norman invasion of 1066...
the fortune of when the Spanish armada was
met with the fickle English channel weather:
a people who have not been conquered
for a long time: are not slack... slacking about...
so? whatever is coming out of America doesn't bother me...

mind you... the latest news is ******* promising:
isn't it? i wasn't a big fan of Salman Rushdie...
oh... right the two songs...
lyrically... similar?
musically though? there's that rough-edge:
bass that sounds like a horn...
Fall Out Boy's Uma Thurman has it...
and Midnight Oil's: the Dead Heart has it too...
it's a sound akin to the word: PROWL
if you trill the R... roll it... rattle it...

that's the thing with Midnight Oil...
i remember hearing that one song of theirs they
play on Polish radio... beds are burning...
i spent... over 10 years looking up both the band
and the song name: 10 years i was looking for that song...
and once i found it i figured: it's probably not even
their best song... hey presto...

oh right... Salman Rushdie gets stabbed 15 times in
the neck...
i'm not a massive fan: i tried reading pride...
mind you... i love the comparison he gives...
Satan is falling from the sky head first, calm,
motionless like a sack of potatoes...
while Gabriel? Gabriel is trying to imitate a bird...
flapping his hands and legs about...
i guess the former is a fatalist while the second
is a would-be-opportunist...
but **** me... 15 times in the neck?

i'm starting to think all Muslim men are secretly
women...
why? there's that quote: hell knows no fury like
a woman scorned...
well... that works just as well for Muslim men:
hell knows no fury like a Muslim man insulted:
wait wait... reiteration:
hell knows no fury like a Muslim being told there's
something like free-thinking...
that certain things can be scrutinised: revised...
ergo? Muslim men are feminine:
but no surprises... polygamy and eunuchs...
me? i don't care... like i told one colt outside of
a supermarket...
he gave me 10 squid to buy him a bottle of *****...
he was in a menage trois...
i took the tenner... bought myself a whiskey
and thought: hmm... might as well but him a litre
bottle...
walked out... oh man: i was mouthed off like mad...
why didn't you buy me a 35cl flask?!
why did you buy me a litre?!
i thought you wanted *****?
the argument became so heated that a security
guard emerged from the supermarket:
- i'll get my uncle to beat you up!
- boyo, listen... listen... i have a death-wish...
tell me where you uncle wants to meet up with me...
i'll just tell him you wanted to drink *****
at the age of 15 to impress a girl... your friend...
is already *******... you're just sloppy seconds mate...

oh sure... you can insult Islam by more ways than one...
Socrates? illiterate... Jesus? illiterate...
Muhammad? illiterate...
who accounted for the life of Socrates? Plato...
Jesus? hold up... a literate fisherman by
the name of Peter? so... fishermen were literate
but the carpenters weren't? ****'s sake...
what a gap... i can imagine a tax collector to be literate...
but there's a gap... carpenters were illiterate
but fishermen were... hmm...

Muhammad? despised in Mecca... took a trip to Medina:
what's the whole affair surrounding the Satanic
Verses? CRANES... some **** about how Allah
took an wife: a pagan Arabic deity... some **** like that...
i'm flimsy on the details...
the basic motto being: Allah has no partners...
he's ultimate omni-solipsist

that's how i arrived an the compliments towards
monotheism... sitting in the dark listening
to several variations of the Adhan...
this... monotheistic god: whether Jew-....
no no... he's different... the Hebrew god is equivalent
to Hades in Greek mythology...
in no known mythology: he's a god that's a god-eater...
he ate up Beelzebub... who was a deity:
before becoming Satan's sidekick...

insult Islam? what about that woman that ran around
two mountain ranges... wasn't she Abraham's concubine?!
she wasn't his wife...
monotheism = an autistic god...
a solipsistic god... a solipsistic...
the omni-verse of man's self capacity and capability...
it's a strange model since... polytheism produced
more interesting: more opened minded people...

oh: Islam is beautiful... just like camels and like
an oasis is beautiful: in a desert...
Dubai is also beautiful in a desert:
such a splendid: pointless city...
the Adhan... i love listening to Adhans...
those elongated vibrating vowels...
when Arabs sing it's perfectly alright...
they drop the glut of a drooling tongue of QBAH...

they resonate... they talk? i'm thinking about
sweeping the streets... or haggling over
some cheap **** in a flea market...

Muhammad was illiterate... funny... that flight from
Mecca to Medina... who did he marry?
an older woman... an entrepreneurial woman...
a businness woman...
funny... i ****** a ******* with her name...
Khadija... but this one is Turkish... she's not Arabic...
and unlike Muhammad: i'm writing
the ******* book, akin the lines of Elvis Costello's
lyrics: every, *******, day... me...
i'm writing it... because... who wrote the Quran?
at least the first surah?
Khadija! she wrote them! a woman wrote
the first entries of the Quran...
she was the literate one: he... sure as ****... from what
i heard: wasn't...
a woman wrote the first entries of the Quran...
mind you... why do the sheikhs adorn clothing in white
while the women are subject to attire in black...
seriously?! that predates Nietzsche proposition
of god being dead: who died?!
who died?! who died in order for women to suffer
so in the sun? that's predating the Victorian prim
and pomp...

            i don't want to understand these people...
stabbing a guy who scribbled some words
15 ******* times in the neck?
come on: hell know no fury like a Muslim man
insulted... guess his brain goes where his ****
is about to **** out a ******* Tikka Masala chicken
makeover with a pita bread and some veggie extras...
because: that's where it's going!

i do admire the adhan... like i admire crusader chants
of the templars...
but a call to prayer? i sense it: since i rarely dream...
a bit like... trying to have a handshake with my
shadow: a funny joke... prayer is such a selfish
endeavour... since... you're never really praying
for the betterment of others: just your self
and the solipsistic nature of a monotheistic deity...
love the songs: hate the tributes...

paint me: a prettier ******* picture...

it must be the heat... but i had this wild idea...
burning my brain... evaporating whatever is supposed
to be contained between the two ears..
and behind the two eyes...
woman are the best... but also the worst of humanity...
men? they're either the best or the mediocre...
after all: you can't be a ****** genocidal maniac to
begin or end with...
you're either a great genocidal maniac or you're not...

the point being... the love triangle of Paris...
Helen and Melenaous...
    hmm... i'm thinking...
i'm not a Holocaust denier... **** me: i'm pretty
sure a lot of Polacks were used to build
the concentration camps under forced labour...
no no... i'm thinking Helen...
i'm thinking who Adolf ****** dated...

i was watching this documentary where "they" excavated
genetic background checks from Eva Braun's
personal belongings... a hair-comb with her hair...
turns out... she had Hebrew ancestry...
so... ******... dated a Jewish girl... while: dessimating
the Jews... fishy... fishing for red herrings...
i don't care much for aliens:
i've seen a fluorescent UFO once...
obviously i didn't take a picture...
i was too engrossed in drinking and lamenting
while sitting under a tree in a summer that didn't
starve my mind with a heat-wave...

women are worst than men...
men are more stupid and smarter... paradox after
paradox... i'm thinking of Helen of Troy and i'm thinking
of Eva Braun...
is it a conspiracy theory? what if she...
a Jewish girl... whispered a sweet lie into that maniac's
ear... hey... you start a Jewish prone genocide:
our people: just might get our land back!
we might have our...
there was the genesis... there was the exodus...
what's the Hebrew word for the return?
the SHOAH-לַחֲזוֹר
        KHZUR... the event that's best coupled as:
SHOAH-KHZUR...
the calamity to return to one's homeland...
which... isn't... wasn't it true... come to fruition?!
Helen of Troy... Eva ****** nee Braun?
listen... i'm busy *******... i'm going to spend the next
few days ******* myself without
*******... so i can build up a stamina
for an hour and not finish: although: gladly...
within half...
        plus... i've already ****** a Turkish *******
with a name the same as Muhammad's first wife...
the one who wrote the first Surah of the Quran:
because... he was illiterate: while she wasn't...
my Hebrew might be off...
but... i don't believe in monotheism...
  to begin with...
                            i don't believe in an autistic
robot god... i don't believe in a robotic world...
some things can be changed...
but i sort of like entertaining the idea that Eva Braun
is the modern version of Helen of Troy...
the best an the worst in women...
in men? just the best and the mediocre...
she must have whispered into whittle Adolf's ear:
hey... you start killing my people...
the global community will finally decide to give the
Jews their homeland back...
start killing... genocidally...
i mean: **** me... didn't they commit a joint suicide?!
people conjure up fairy-tales all the time...
well: the ones that can...

after all i'm a huge fan of the Batman universe...
perhaps i didn't see my parents be murdered
as a child: what child does?
on a scale of averages...
i was raised by my grandparents: i had dogs for
siblings... i didn't see me father from the age
of 4 through to 8...
i didn't see my mother from the age of 6 through to 8...
i wasn't outright abandoned like
my father was by his parents and raised
by his grandmother and his foster grandfather...
maybe that's what makes me so "clingy" to them:
or the outright economic structures...
but? intellectually: i can prosper on my own...

i can have these thought: i have already stated...
i can read the newspapers and look down on
the journalists... you... established folk...
it's like these people are the ones with the money
to produce, buy and write eternal nothings
on papyrus... the priestly / journalistic class of folk...
but then the printing press appears
and the gatekeepers are bypassed...
ergo? the internet... i don't want money
for what i ingest, digest and therefore regurgitate...

i saw the potential for a cover-op.
                  i could really do some damage if i just
dedicated myself to a thirst for knowledge...
i could sit back and watch the world change:
like... like play-dough...
  and i have... and i will continue to do so...

with the Europeans having expelled the Hebrews:
who has been welcomed into our midst
to replace those Hebrews?
calamity-to-return... to one's abiding midst...
away from the Europeans and into the Arab lot...
after all:
didn't the Arabs and the Berbers conquer
Spain with the help of the Jews?
i heard that that's what happened...

i need to work on my Hebrew...
mind you... it's an enigmatic language...
how would i write shoah-khzur?

    ש (shin) i.e. the -in disappeares
vowels are diacritical marks in Hebrew...
although: א (aleph) and ע (ayin):
are the twin-gay-lords of Eden...
who somehow managed to give birth
to the children Leph and Yin through their ****...

i was told what i current wrote was a given:
but? makes no sense...
ש no O no A... ה
i would have written as שה...
                            i can now understand how and why
emperor Nero became so easily *******...
it wasn't about: oh these Hebrews and their fire deity...
he turned the early Christians into torches
and fed them to the lions, because...
look how these people write!
there are writing in cipher-mode!

there are no vowels in hebrew worth stating them
as letters! שה shoah: yeah... yeah!
Hebrew has two vowels as consonants: Aleph and Ayin...
the gay Adams...
all the other vowels are diacritical markers...
they're not proper letters...
vowels are female:
consonants as masculine...
don't: you ******* know... how nomadic people
work?!

the internet is DUMB... KHZUR...
לַ: that's lamedh...
      is the H a surd in Hebrew? i doubt it...
כהזר...

כהזר שה                  -->      <--

              how mighty must have the wrath of Nero
been... to turn the early Christians into
torches: where are your vowels!
i can see two vowels behaving like 'em!

i need to regret something...
on the 16th i'm going back to the brothel...
my favorite new album?
the 1987 release b Midnight Oil:
Diesel and Oil...
i need prostitutes...
i need more than king Solomon...
i have n infatuation with the bodies of mandible
potential...

there are words: that are letters:
shin-cholem-kametz-h'eh
kaf-h'eh-zayin-kibbutz/shurek?-resh ..

no wonder emperor Nero slaughtered the whole
lot of yous...
i wouled have too...
white man singing about the disgraces of fellow
white man...
good enugh for me: if the Africans weren't
moved to America and required to forget their African
tongue: they would sing zilch of the blues
and a zilch of jazz... there would be zilch
of Mbapa Ella Fitzgerald... no Nina Simone...
no "RESPECT"...
            *******: self-flagellating whittle white man
of the anglo-saxon demands...
no! if there was no slave-trade...
toward the Americas... there would be no jazz!
no escape from the mind of a Mozart...
Europeans don't have voices to sing!
Africans do! but they require a European tongue
to sing in!

what racial pride? pride in what?
not keeping your language?!
being black racist supe-racialists...
our ethnicity is more important than the language
we speak? seriously?!
you... you're doubly the slave...
you don't speak your mother's tongue...
you are urban *******...
that's what you are... to me...
urban *******...
                            i speak my mother's tongue...
i guess being bilingual can be a little bit complicated...
i guess it's easier otherwise...
urban *******...
                    "natives"...
                                      as a ****** i get the whole:
"native" project all the time... **** it...
i'm siding with the imaginary Tsar...
                                  no! nein! niet!
nie!

                                  i know what brown-skinned
people are like in the work-force... they're worse than
women: they're lazier...
i'd like to think about shooting them in the head:
to get them to move-on...
esp. their younglings...
their young are CULL MATERIAL...
maybe that's why they reproduce so much:
they are CULL MATERIAL...

maybe that's why i'm experiencing a heat-wave...
i'm building up an adherence toward
a super-structure of disease-aversion...
and that implies... racial-tension mechanisations...
because i have to...
i have to... the Chinese are not going to stop *******
silly... the Indians aren't... while the demands on
the Europeans to "save the earth": **** it...
no no.... listen...
this planet is decidedly going to burn...
i just don't care...

                        i don't have any children...
i don't have a future beside the future of an idea...
that's all i have...
i don't care...
                    you burn whatever you want to
burn...
  i just wish i was living in Apocalyptic Times
and i was the Mad Max...
i seriously wish i was the reinvested
patriarch Abraham in the reinvented times
of new beginnings...
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Todesfugue ("Death Fugue")
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
We’re digging a grave like a hole in the sky;
there’s sufficient room to lie there.
The man of the house plays with vipers; he writes
in the Teutonic darkness, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He composes by starlight, whistles hounds to stand by,
whistles Jews to dig graves, where together they’ll lie.
He commands us to strike up bright tunes for the dance!

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come dawn, come midday, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house plays with serpents; he writes...
he writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...”
We are digging dark graves where there’s more room, on high.
His screams, “Hey you, dig there!” and “Hey you, sing and dance!”
He grabs his black nightstick, his eyes pallid blue,
screaming, “Hey you―dig deeper! You others―sing, dance!”

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house writes, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...” as he cultivates snakes.
He screams, “Play Death more sweetly! Death’s the master of Germany!”
He cries, “Scrape those dark strings, soon like black smoke you’ll rise
to your graves in the skies; there’s sufficient room for Jews there!”

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come midnight;
we drink you come midday; Death’s the master of Germany!
We drink you come dusk; we drink you and drink you...
He’s a master of Death, his pale eyes deathly blue.
He fires leaden slugs, his aim level and true.
He writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He unleashes his hounds, grants us graves in the skies.
He plays with his serpents; Death’s the master of Germany...

“Your golden hair Margarete...
your ashen hair Shulamith...”

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.

Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, black, milk, drink, vipers, serpents, hounds, grave, graves, golden, hair, Margarete, Shulamith, sing, dance, Death, master, Germany, Nazis, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts
John F McCullagh Dec 2013
I wore a gold Star.
I bear a tattoo.
When Six Million died
I was one of the few,
Through the mercy of God
or the missed chance of Fate,
I escaped from the boxcar
into winter’s dim light.

My parents and sister,
Long are dust on the wind.
Their faith and their race
were their only known sins
Now, though stooped and arthritic,
I still testify
To the bitter cup tasted
when the Six Million died.


(An elderly docent at the Shoah Center recalls his brush with death at the hands of the Gestapo)
Eesha Mar 2021
Bigotry has a smell of death
The fuhrer would watch piles on piles of empty flesh
In the summer of 1941
On the grounds of Auschwitz, that place weighed heavier than a ton
Years after the shoah, would this understanding begin to unfold
That nothing stains the soul more indelibly than loathe
What do the blind see?
Your oratory abhorrence they forsee
They see, not your bitter visage
But their ears crush under the muscle of your burning rage
What do the deaf hear?
Even years after the passing of a yesteryear
I suppose, they hear words, like skin caressing skin
Your tirade tearing their tissues like a throw of javelin
Along Its path, since decades, turning into centuries
Before times were tamed
Even after times were maimed
Our tongues have plucked
Incessantly
The plumage of quarantined birds
With stubborn shame
And a sequence of demise ensues
Their voice also dies, so does their silence
Because after all
Bigotry has a smell of death
Thurston Jul 2022
To dream aboard a clipper ship on seas;
To dream of our lost lives upon green bay;
Of a New York skyline beyond cool breeze;
Of ascending towers of steel display.
Beyond these doors, we rise with express speed,
In florescent light to its lofty crown.
Our love is carved  within art deco frieze;
Of our hearts rejoiced over city’s clouds.








On trains, viewed as undesirables, sway;
On platforms, gathered in our silence, wait;
To brittle lines, led beneath clouds of grey;
To a fate, bleaker than these entrance gates.
‘Oh sisters, brothers, all of mercy’s prayers;
May our hands hold us now, for marked are we;
To shamble alone into chambers where
Our mortal love dies and our spirits flee.’









Their bodies now gone, so no one can see.
Their trembling souls shone of infinite light.
A truth has spoken with certain decree
For those who were lost in man's darkest night.
Their sorrow's alive and remains with you;
Their pain is eternal, bound and not free.
Til’ banished the views of misguided truths;
There'll never be silence, never be peace.
holocaust
The Laughing Matter
We laughed and laughed it was raining heavy we didn't see we were
off road and flew, still laughing- over
a precipice and landed in an opening in the forest
where rabbit congregates, we had laughed so much we had to go
out of the car and ***
Then it snowed big white flakes the stuff and rabbit appeared in
all white inquisitive as they are when stuck a neck in we rolled up
The window fried rabbits every day.
The dog got sick of the same food and wanted to go home
we didn't have that instinct but followed behind as luck would have it
was only five minutes away a farmer with his tractor took the car to
the mechanic and we laughed and laughed making funny noises
of the stuffed owl on the wall….the house took fire and people in white
took us to a care home where we were giving anti-laugh medicine,
funny hats and it was New Year Eve.  
What had caused this hilarity was because Hillary Clinton had lost
the election and Trump a millionaire was going to bring work to those on
the dole, of course, this will not happen and my car is not insured for
the Shoah that will engulf us
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
You Were My Death
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were my death;
I could hold you
when everything abandoned me—
even breath.

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.

Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, death, breath, abandoned, abandonment, hold, holding, Germany, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
O, Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I’m undermined by blood―
made invisible,
death's possession.

Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else’s eyes
may somehow still see me,
though I’m blind,

here where you
deny me voice.

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.

Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, root, dream, blood, death, face, eyes, blind, sight, seeing, vision, voice, voiceless, silent, silenced, ardor, love, passion, desire, Germany, abandoned, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2017
and, as ever, the very much welcome felt presence of the bass guitar - lao che's hydropiekłowstąpienie (http://tinyurl.com/ya8t766t). the song refers to noah, and the title of the song? water-hell-enters.

given the right-wing commentary
of the current zeitgeist
   with respect, regarding the infiltration
of islam of the culture,
                and demographic -
how could there be a vacuum
   concerning an answer from
         the opposing, eastern flank?
besides russia...
        i'm sniggering, pointing out
that historical maps...
        i can't stop fastcinating myself
over the map of the *black plague
...
   can it not have been some
divine intervention -
  if the jews
                       painted their doors
with lamb's blood when the angel of
death passed in egypt,
   what happened in poland
  when the schwarz engel samael
   passed through the continent?
    the city of Łódź was the jewish
capital of europe at the time...
                 even in my home town we
have a jewish cemetery...
              but with the spread
of the shvarts plogn otherwise
known also as shvarts toyt
  (both ref. to yiddish,
  yiddish being hebrew-german) -
and no wonder the future gave
us the shoah - the calamity -
look how the two languages fused
and seemed almost inseperable;
but the map of the black plague
   looks much like the current map
of the spread of islam into europe...
   no apology,
given the current western european
commentary,
    islam = the black plague,
  with regards to historical
                               and current maps;
hard to penetrate a country
   who graced a pope to be minded,
even the infamous radio maryja
   run by father rydzyk -
         ah, that corrupt priestly caste,
where grannies rather donate
to the church, than buy medication.
having suffered the shoah
you should be ashamed
national socialist
in all but name
a fascist dictatorship
eugenically made
and educated in Germany
antisemitic if i dare to say
youre the same
the way you treat the Palestinians
reminds me of the ghetto tales
you told to help pave the way
to the gilded land of Israel
shalom to all but the zionists
poetryaccident Jan 2018
Ask the old ones if they remember
when the vans arrived in the night
taking those dismissed by God
I mean the one that rules this cruel world
the grievous sins of past monsters
brought to bear in time of Shoah
are duly marked in black and white
fading to gray in history’s light.

This is forgotten in modern times
as wise men believe there is a place
to speak with tongues of equal weight
to demons pouring from Sheol
skittering with considered options
torches held high to show their faces
these are the minions for the mighty
allowing the vermin to spread among us.

The wink and the nod from pulpit
covering the leader who has no sorrow
fear is the fuel for what has now bloomed
the poison fast spread, consuming the good
look to the world to ask what’s happened
the old ones would state the obvious
monsters have come from the shadows
the other God rules with night now closing.

2018. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20180128.
“Other God Rules” was inspired by a Tumblr posting that described the reactions of the residents of a Jewish-run elder care non-profit in the face of the Charlottesville white-nationalist events.
(Soft and whispered, as in some pop punk song intros)

(The circle goes round
The spiral goes down
You become what you don't want.

Who is the cent-eral figure,
Is he a beacon of hope?
I'd-shuh hate to be so blunt)

(Power chords)

(Shouted emotionally)

You go on and be a paladin, cuz you can be, I
I'll just take the obligation
You deny it's what you do to me, do to me, but I know
I'm a blatant disappointment

If you could make me feel, make me feel, like weee hyad hope
Even if it was a **** lie
You would give me the sensation
Well before you were indi-yeeted
For every wohn of yoah **** lies

Now Iyhh, deon't, bleame you
For lyen to me, lyen to me
Lyi-ennn is all we kyann doh
Frommh, theatt, vantage
It ohmost seems like allll we evuh dooo
All we do is tahll - the - truth.

(More vicious)

The circle goes round.

The spiral goes down.

You become what you don't want.

Who is the center-al figyuh?

A beacon of hope?

I'd shoah hate to behy sooo blunt!

— The End —