The Grown-up World like Auschwitz

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Since childhood nightmares disappeared, his dreams

Have drifted, off-white stuff, vanilla drinks

(Caffeine-less, no taurine), and no snake screams.

Wound scarlets are replaced by soymilk blinks.

But . . . never mind. The life around him gives

Him scares as if a House of Horrors toys

With hearts on torture racks. No careful sieves

Protect him now. Life hugs him hard with noise

Like choppers blasting Wagner. The world of men

Alive has banished kiddie visions in the night.

Men threaten rape of every type and then

  They thrust and shoot out blobs of off-white blight.

    The Nazis would have loved to use men’s spree

     Of pulsing nastiness like Zyklon B.