PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

A poet working in a nursing home?---
you will not find much to inspire a poem.
This patient, Alten Kampfer, has been here
a long time, and the other patients fear
him; for the most part, they leave him alone
(their reasons they have not cared to make known).
He mutters at them, and keeps to himself.
He has some rather odd books on his shelf---
novels about alternate history.
His phonograph plays Wagner constantly---
his favorite is "Ride of the Valkerie."
Once, only once, old Alten shared with me
a sinister, obsessive fantasy---
to be the dictator of Germany
(dictating what? and what would that be like?).
He said that he could make a German Reich
that would rule Europe for a thousand years.
He spoke until he could not hold the tears
back ("Oh, the kind of world that could have been!"
he wept).  His mind must be a little twisted:
we all know Germany has not existed
among the nations six decades and more---
its fate sealed by the War to end all War.

He did not ever mention it again,

not in my hearing:  silence---is his slap in
our faces, and a kind of wordless sneer.
Oh well, who cares?  A vegetarian,
he thinks that meat was meant for carrion,
and might, somehow, corrupt his purity
and compromise his lofty destiny---
which that old fool believes is still to be.
Yes, he is full of eccentricity:
would you believe each shirt he owns is brown?
We keep him well, but when you come right down
to it, he is quite a pathetic clown,
a poor example of the master race
he claims to represent.  Look at his face:
that moustache makes him look like Charlie Chaplin.
Working with him, he really makes you feel
this world of ours is rotten and not real.
But he, too, is a fake, the stubborn cuss.
Even his name might be an alias.