THERE'S A FENCE AROUND FOREVER

Here's a title I've only begrudgingly come to tolerate. I suppose it's apt given the subject matter, but I wish something better had occured to me. This has recieved several revisons, even as late as today. Never been completely happy with it, then I never am with what I write so I figure I might as well stop some time. I might tinker with it again if I feel so inclined. This poem was promted by my attempt to write a ghost story in an environment I had never seen apparitions in. ( if there have been such stories I have never come across it ) So, this is a poem of ghosts in a Consentration Camp. Seems ripe for troubled souls. However in the final version, the actual ghosts are almost a sidebar and it had become a tale of one German's struggle to come to terms with the methodical mass slaughter of Jews. Every day he must perform a duty he does his best to supress the implications of, but he does it for self preservation. To refuse is to sign his own death warrant. Unfortunately for him those he murdered comes back to take their revenge. The poem is from his point of view.


Tis was the day like any other
born to the stench of decay
Blue skies would never hover
above us it was always grey
Barbed wire gleaming
off a pale muted haze
A fence around forever
the chill of death's embrace

Woman shuffle slowly by
traverse the endless yard
Prolongs another treasured breath
and refuge from the guards
One cannot even glimpse the tears
obscured by torrent rain
It soaks into the famished earth,
but can't conceal the shame

They know the destination
and their befallen fate
They yield to domination
subservients to hate
Heads held in shadows
spirits beyond repair
Woeful broken marrow
a pestilence of fear

I watch from a distance
as they lumber through the door
A frigid gust, a relentless wind
strokes the unwashed floor
I look not at their faces
I do not need to see
Six foot deep my conscience lies
it's either them or me

Hestitant in peeling stripes
shed dignity with clothes
Without a stitch of thread to wear
they are naked, numb, morose
Across the threshold waits
blind suffocating walls
I steal the seeds of life
of every one and all

I know they scream,
but I've chosen not to hear
It sutures my resolve
to keep my mind elsewhere
By duty I am bound
no judgement I may make
My country I must serve
redemption I forsake

Silence sighs at last
a trembling demise
It seeps into the past
and gradually subsides
A crumbled heap of humanity
numbers without names
Adrift in a sea of insanity
poisened rivers in their veins

The furnace never cools
the fury of the flame
It feeds upon the fuel
the remnants of the slain
Too fast, too soon we kill
bones that burn too slow
We're piling up a hill
that will never cease to grow

So deep we dig them graves
so many we conceal
The earth's veneer a darkned veil
negates not how I feel
There is no restful place
no respite come the night
When remembering the day
in anguished sleep I writhe

Still my dreams be not
they haunt me so
All these pleeding eyes
cannot let them go
Guilt immersed in consequence
wields such stark dismay
It's grip ferocious unrelenting
makes me the hunted prey

Tattered hulks of horror
gathers by my bed
Sentiments of sorrow
I wish I could have fled
I move without motion
my will is not my own
I know upon this notion
I'll reap what I have sown

Alone in the chamber
I fall to my knees
I beg for forgiveness
I bargain for release
Dread does besiege me
by despondance I'm entombed
( I hear ) the hiss of pipes a solitary sound
that fades away too soon