Alcuin of York - Well no one will ever accuse you of superficiality!
Heavy subject indeed, and it's left its scar on Western civilization. We still have not recovered, and probably never will. One can wonder that the German (and other Europeans) sleepwalked through the insanity without recognizing it as insane. But aren't we doing the same now?
I hate to make suggestions to such a powerful poem, but the "spoke with a grin" is a forced configuration to the iambic. "Spoke" feels naturally like it should be accented, especially with its long vowel and hard consonants. I would therefore like to suggest, "that spoke a grin" or "that spoke with grin". In any case, the title also adds to the poems force. Well done!
Alcuin
Kat - Thanks all......I was actually inspired by leanne to write.......and alcuin, you're right about that line, I'll have to tweak it a bit......btw, might the question be if there's ever been a time in history when mass killing did not happen? Just in the past century, the grand total of everyone killed [along with those dying of starvation or disease] in both world wars [civilians and military] is staggering.......not to mention the Armenians, Cambodians, Soviets, Chinese and various African nations that all top the million death mark, for one cruel reason or another......add in the number killed from Ireland to Israel to Iran to India, etc. specifically in the name of someone's God......and that is what's freakin insane, my friend.
Leanne - "One can wonder that the German (and other Europeans) sleepwalked through the insanity without recognizing it as insane." Ahem. Well at least some of us took arms against it instead of waiting for a bomb to land on our own territory. But of course, some nations profited more than others out of this period -- like the ones who scored the nuclear scientists. Very sore point.
Gypsies, Jews, gays, people with disabilities, people who wore glasses, people who had speech impediments, people with brown eyes (well, those last weren't necessarily killed -- their corneas were cut off and replaced with blue to see if it worked). Inaction killed them long before the gas. Just like it's killing them in the Congo, in Zimbabwe, in Rwanda...
Kat - I've read that Mengele also injected blue dye into the eyes of the infamous sets of twins he experimented on.....not to mention the other twisted experiments carried out in the name of eugenics and the aryan 'ideal'......but almost as unbelievable is that in the 21st centruy, here in the states, in our prestigious ivy league, we hire a professor who writes that infants up to a certain age [I think he said 3 months] should be euthanized if they are born disabled......human beings are an evil bunch.
Leanne - Stephen Hawking must be pissed off about that. And Byron would have been knocked on the head for his club foot, I suppose. Abe Lincoln had Marfans syndrome, so his weird fingers and toes might have made him a target. And is it just the visible disabilities? Because the list of people with psychological disorders who've made a dent in history is just about endless. Even myopia is supposedly a disability -- so I'm fucked. There's a lot of focus on "negative body image" because dieting is a trendy thing to talk about -- and big money -- but there's a lot less discussion about why it's just dumb to talk about "curing" things instead of accepting them as contributions to diversity.
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