Tug Dumbly # 47 - Home Care

Home Care

Me and Bill watch the Nazi Channel.  

Which Hitler’s playing today –  

Painter Hitler, Pagan Hitler

Pervert Hitler, Parkinson Hitler?

Beerhall Agitator Hitler?

Farty, Bad-breath, Vego Hitler?  

No, it’s Broken Junkie Hitler, playing with

pretend Panzers in the bunker at the end.  

Don’t know how many times we’ve seen him fall

and rise. He’s like the tide. Or a hemline.

(But god, how sharp they looked

in those wicked Hugo Boss designs!)

And now the end is near, as we wait for that

last breakfast of cyanide and Lugers-Aid.

But no less a thrill-ride for the spoiler.

No, the gun never sets on the Third Reich.

We enter Auschwitz that often at Bill’s place

I can almost make out Primo Levi’s face.

We’ve rolled through Poland, France and Russia

torpedoed Atlantic convoys, blitzed London

overseen death squads cleanse the Ukraine …

And all this just between the ads

for funerals and stain remover.  

For a change of pace we might visit Changi

or the Burma Railway

cruise the pacific – Iwo Jima, Midway –

then swing back through Africa, for Jatz and jam

with the Rats of Tobruk, and a cup of tea

that barely cools from Dunkirk to D-Day.

But they know what we really want:

more of that casual atrocity –   

Jerry-rigged village hangings of horrific flippancy;

those cowed compliant lines herded to kneel

before the gun’s little spit, then that

gentle arc forward, like idols, into pits

over and over, all that paperwork

colourised, killed and bulldozed  

into rag-doll piles, raked from ovens

electrified like spiders on wire.

The war lasted six years.

This snuff reel’s endless

a show of which the Nazi buff never tires.

Bill’s best joke is that Hitler shot himself

because he heard Bill was enlisting.  

He’s told the joke many times.

Maybe he repeats it because he forgets.

Or maybe just thinks it’s worth a re-run,

like Hitler’s victory over the History Channel.