Josef smugly retired behind her eyes,
Jack-booted memories draped lazily over ancient scars;
Crisp German uniform holds sway there
Center stage a Death’s head prominent on his lapel.
Behind the rods and cones
A gray pastiche of hideous images,
Mocking images inexpugnable
Sat arrayed in timorous display.
Her eyes, deeply tucked beneath a Cro-Magnon brow,
Shed little light on that ebon darkness.
Where Lethe tried to flow
Temporal lobes flashed a neon out-of-service sign
Josef had constructed a dam there
And he could not be vanquished.

Assigned a duty
Making choices,
Performed with exacting due diligence
Josef, master chef, smugly diced and sautéed and caramelized
Each supplicant that stepped before him.
Left and right dizzying digit flew
Efficiently executing one obligation after another
Gleefully with the orgasmic pleasure of a lover.
They marched off to the right to live yet another day
To the left to fill the sky with noxious, black cloud silently
Their ashes raining a shroud of misery over the ground.
His eyes gleamed a Technicolor rainbow of satisfaction.

Too often she watched that thumb
And its polished nail
Waving right she ran from the Butcher of Auschwitz,
A demiurge thumbing his nose at right
And at the living refuse that stepped before him.
Untermenschen
Boils, vermin, marred skin
Stepped forward as if living,
And he dispensed with them–
Left death
Right life
And finally off to lunch and a fine wine.
While she existed with her hauntings
He lived with his power.
So, where had God and good gone?