Eastern Front Anger

Eastern Front Anger The tiled oven exploded smoke and debris was strewn everywhere in the room which had been untidy before plasticine animals went up into flames before authoritarian anger banged and exploded before I knew what anger and emotion could be and before I chose to forget the combustion Neighbours stepped up and enquired if anyone else had heard what had happened in the house that had years ago been bombed blazed and smouldered so many times so many fears ago during the war My mother a child during those air-raids and fires had thrown the incendiaries from attic and roof to the street for Fuehrer fatherland and own bloody safety Keeping outer appearance face clean washed in a rush from smoke dust and tiled shrapnel from shame the man said he heard just as well the other victim’s recall of shattering houses dreams stolen childhoods and ceramic fragments and the blasts from the past banging on disorder plasticine wide eyed children faithful in soot The story was told light heartedly amusing and often changed meaning to funny and jolly most entertaining along with the snow on the floorboards produced from white oat flakes which in that same room had created for beauty real child play creative landscapes next to the oven Memories suppressed rejected denied forsaken forgotten I now wonder if dry uncooked porridge flakes resembled the winter white frost when boots were advancing towards Moscow with death in the barrel and fear in the snow The man combusting the child toys in anger was neither too pleased nor enchanted with snow-flaked oat wonder-world and untidy rooms and I was too young to connect the freeze with dead bodies and killing and hunger with the smoke from the camps the transgressions of human disgusting depravity Too young to link the blast from the oven with shredding of humans to charred bits and pieces but I wonder who did what why when and how often for the man and his anger with no choice but forget The man was my father and now that I know much more of all the explosions which happened and happen and will happen again could explode and combust with just the same anger enshrined in that oven so huge and so massive in unspoken emotion's quest and regret I accept that the man whose emotions unleashed so much anger when confronted with oat flakes and oven still is that very same father now dead and alive whom I still struggle to know