Collective Guilt Lm
‘What good´s permitting some prophet of doom? To wipe every smile away …’
The orator grins at his drunken audience through make up and mask
Opens the cabaret’s veil in the theatre of forsaken minds on the run
Champagne flows from magic fountains while Berlin falters from grace
The wild thirties dance to an apocalyptic sound of paralized conscience
Outside the toothbrush moustache commandeers Svastika’s march
Torches set light to mislead passion and houses of semitic prayer
Crystal breaks as brown shirts parade their poisonous conquest
Heil to the savage Führer when ‘reality is something to rise above’
Pirouettes swirl on stilettos while boots squash compassion and lives
Caviar evades judeo-bolshevik scapegoats and trains to the camps
Blond blue-eyed conception born to inhabit Lebensraum on the map
Feeds into industrialist’s dream of war effort and armoured production
The white flag of surrender stuck into skull bones and belligerent stride
No meaningful rise of resistance only raised arms and ‘following orders’
When God capitulated and sang his swan song to the sound of hell fire
And prophets of doom cashed in on gas chambers and golden teeth
It’s easy in hindsight to lift the pen from an immaculate ink-pot of courage
But where would I have been when ashes in Auschwitz were ascending
When evil tore into the last bit of humanity in a vile coup of disgrace
As I look into the mirror of history I reflect on the cowardice in my soul
21st February 2020
‘What good´s permitting some prophet of doom? To wipe every smile away …’
Line from Cabaret the musical base on Christopher Isherwood’s 'Good-bye to
Berlin'
Theme for the poem ‘Reality is something to rise above' Liza Minelli
Copyright © Kai Michael Neumann | Year Posted 2020
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