KAMERAD

"Kamerad, der Fuhrer hat's gesagt: das Reich mus nun erstehen, Kein Mann, der nicht sein Leben wagt, die neue Welt zu sehen." - World War II Marching Song My son was at my ex's house when he accidentally died. They said they were in earshot but I felt my ex's lover lied. I gave my son's half wrapped presents to family friends away, as her lover held her smiling as she wept on Christmas Day. I thought her tears extravagant but she still won't be the same. It is to her vile lover that I have affixed all of the blame. And every time that I might find some part of me to save. I purge it all by placing Legos on my child's grave. I know this lover took my girl and then my son was dead. I cannot sleep at night with rage and my blood pumping red. And in this time when I struggle mighty with my God, the Fuhrer walks into my room and says "Hello, Kamerad." The Angel Reason calls with her winter eyes and snowy skin. And she says you must abandon your suicide within. I behold her strong smile but I won't let myself begin to crack. Spare me your worthless logic because it will not bring me back. Then the Fuhrer comes to me and he shows me how to kill, leads me to a lonely dog I beat senselessly to still. And as I bury innocence and cover it all up with sod, The Fuhrer grasps my shoulder and says "good work, Kamerad". Now the Angel of Passion visits with her secret Celtic name. I say to her to leave me and that I will not have her flame. And she says "I could make you feel if you could just come to bed", But I give her only coldness as I have chosen to be dead. At the target range I shoot my new rifle more and more. They see me shooting paper but I shoot something core. And I do not think my rehearsing murder is remotely odd, as the Fuhrer teaches me to aim, every bullet, kamerad. Enter the Angel of the Decent and she offers a cup of wine, and she says you can be healed if you but choose this cup of mine. I am rude and I tell this angel that her offer is the worst, for I shall drink of emptiness and Hell's never ending thirst. His family was gathered for a picnic cookout in their yard. I shot them all in minutes caught them completely off their guard. But I left her lover wounded for a special road to trod. I finished him barehanded, chocked him singing Kamerad. The Angel Grief's a weeping at the horror that I've done. Says "this you cannot justify and your hate insults your son". Still you could choose to weep and save your soul in jail But I took pictures of the corpses and to my ex-wife I do mail Now I'm strapped onto the chair and I can only move my hand, To survivors I give the finger with more hate than they can stand. As the Warden readies the machine he says he hopes I'm right with God, I bite down on the rubber and I die screaming Kamerad. The Angel of Death she takes me to the place where I belong. Everything I thought that Hell would be has turned out to be wrong. Still, I do not long for Heaven and I've chosen where I fell. My only disappointment is that there's too much life in Hell. The Fuhrer greets me from a wood and beckons me inside, to stand a top a bunker where too many saints have died. And he says pour the poison and we shall strike against our God, and I murder saints and loose more evil chanting Kamerad. The Angel of Kindness comes and she holds out her graceful hand, to raise me from this bitterness to a peaceful silver land, but I choose instead rejection and say I do not need to care, and the Angel of Kindness drifts away with tears behind her hair. With my Mauser and in mud and ash and the Devil's uniform, This place is barren void and it is neither cold nor warm. Angel Judgement's last to come and sighs that I have chosen poor. And I say begon you Yahweh puppet as I have chosen war. The Fuhrer shines with glowing eyes and many miles tall. Made of stone he speaks plainly to the damned army of us all. "We will enter our oblivion as we shall march upon our God". And we make war noise by our billions, shout seig heils, Kamerad. Pushed on by Demon masters with whips of hate and sticks of pain, we drive on with obsession through fields of skulls and bloody rain, and we do not pause to notice that there is no rage in God, as we march into damnation's death singing Kamerad.

About KAMERAD

Formed from the raw dough of relationships good and breakups bad, military documentary and biblical apocolypse, Kamerad explores the idea that people choose to be damned by rejecting the temptation of life that the Almighty offers.

Meter-wise, the poem is inspired by Bob Dylan's singing in his original basement tapes version of "I'm Not There". Originally Kamerad was going to be a short story or maybe even a small video game but the way Dylan sang that "I'm Not There" just blew me away and it just pushed me into poetry.

The longish sentences with a bit of a break in the middle come right out of the song. Compare the phrasing of "But now she's home beside me and I'd like her here to stay", with, "I say to her to leave me and that I will not have her flame". Kamerad is not all like that, and neither is "I'm Not There", but it got me rolling. The structure of choosing between Fuhrer and Angel comes from translating the higher pitch versuses with the lower ones into evil and good. Finally, the drop and finality of "I'm not there, I'm gone", is echoed here in "Hello, Kamerad", with the noticable difference that the hardness of the word Kamerad adds a bit more punch at the end of stanza pair.

Architecturally speaking, the poem's not all that great. To make it a really great poem, I'd either cover its failings in song but I'm far too musically unaccomplished for that, or, I'd have a stricter meter throughout it, and I didn't. But I figured that Kamerad is a decent enough of a story to cover the failings of its structure, and in the age of Google, quantity of pages matters as much as the quality. I shall just have to learn and write more.

Finally, Kamerad is a German word for comrade, like a friend who shares an experience, but in this case Kamerad, and the depiction of Hell, are both inspired by an old documentary which had a clip of propaganda of SS training, singing Kamerad. It was so classicly NAZI, the old idea of following your Fuhrer anywhere and murdering a bunch of innocent people as a sort of bonding thing, that I felt it a great image of Hell. I must admit I was fairly blasted when I saw it. The lyric from what I think is that song opens the poem.