I see them lingering in front of the chain fences of Auschwitz
I see the Gestapo step out
into the starless courtyard,
their black uniforms disappearing like the
freedom stolen from the Jewish.

I see my targets with a few documents in their hands
commanding the prisoners to dig huge 6’ trenches with their
bare hands still ripped open from yesterday’s digging.

the Nazis gun-tips soaring in the October air,
they are about to shoot, they are about to kill,
they are soldiers, they are obedient,
all they know is they are taking orders,
they would never Want to hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and talk them out
of it--it’s not right,

the Nazis Were innocent people, they are going to do things
they cannot ever see themselves doing,
they are going to do bad things to the wrong people
they are going to send people the wrong way,
they want to stop sending innocent people to go “shower”.

I want to go up to them there
in the late October moonlight and say it,
the Jew’s serious miserable faces turning to me,
their pitiful scarred bodies,
the Nazi’s arrogant blind faces turning to me,
their pitiful strange bodies,
but I don’t do it. It would be a death wish. I instead
take them up by aiming through my scope,
that is the only way, these insensible soldiers
have no idea, what’s coming.