William Heath – Five Poems

 The Poison Kitchen

 

The Munich Post consistently

sounded the alarm about the dangers

of Hitler. Starting in the 1920s 

exposés by intrepid journalists

depicted his unstable personality,

perverse proclivities, twisted

ideology, and ruthless followers.

Hitler set out to destroy the paper

he called “The Poison Kitchen.”

 

They ridiculed him in cartoons,

investigated his shady dealings,

detailed his evil designs, including 

a “final solution” to send the Jews 

to labor camps in remote swamps.

When Hitler’s half-niece Geli Raubal,

unwilling object of his obsessions,

supposedly shot herself with his gun 

they debunked the official version.

 

As his henchmen launched

the Beer Hall Putsch—before it 

became a fiasco that sent

their leader to prison—they trashed

the offices of the Munich Post.

After his release a year later,

the paper intensified its revelations 

about secret Nazi death squads 

eliminating a hit list of enemies.

 

To retaliate, Hitler used both violence

and lawsuits, suing the newspaper

for libel, while reactionary Bavarian 

courts often ruled in his favor. His stab-

in-the-back theory of how World War I 

was lost, promises to make Germany great 

again, became popular, “Hitler-smitten 

women” gave their money and jewels, 

young men rallied to his nihilistic cause.

 

Like most megalomaniacs Hitler

was thin-skinned, quick to take offense

and seek revenge. He had a compulsion

to spread false accusations, using blackmail

and extortion to intimidate his opponents.

He found that the more he told a lie

the more people came to believe it.

German politicians thought they could

tame him, but they were wrong.

 

When Hitler came to power in 1933

the offices of the Munich Post were

sacked and burned to the ground,

the reporters sent to concentration camps

where most died. The Reichstag fire

was used as an excuse to destroy what

was left of the free press, other papers

simply complied with the Nazi line.

 

This prescient story haunts me: it shows 

what happens when the henhouse elects

the fox, when people, under the spell of 

a charlatan promising only he can solve all 

their problems, hand over unchecked power. 

History shows such patterns repeat: 

what will be Trump’s Reichstag fire? 

——————

Bad Ideas

People can’t live by bread alone,

they also need bad ideas.

The trick is not to think 

subtle thoughts, but rather 

 

to find a notion so simple-

minded millions of people 

will believe it: like Hitler 

claiming the world’s evils

 

are the fault of the Jews 

or Marx’s dogma that virtue 

resides only in the proletariat.  

Trump promises only he can 

 

make America great again 

(the opposite is the case),

inspiring his cult to demand 

that he promise more

 

and prophecy anew. People

are everywhere enthralled

by bad ideas while talking

as if they were truly free.  

——————

A Republic

 

if you can keep it,

Ben Franklin said.

Well, we couldn’t:

The people spoke by

puking on their shoes.

 

Instead of an informed

electorate, misinformed,

muddle-headed, twitter-

pated, and sometimes

mean-spirited voters

 

who found Trump’s 

taking leave of his senses

irresistible. It wasn’t

the economy, stupid,

but a deep state of

 

delusion, an unconscious

sum of all fears and hatreds

that caused people to

abandon common sense

and opt for a tyrant,

 

making a mockery of all 

we stood for. No longer 

the leader of the free world, 

we’re now a poster child

for how democracies fail.  

——————

The Elephant in the Room

 

is that Trump is mentally ill:

a pathological narcissist,

everything he says, all that

he sees, are centered in a self

fatally flawed, vulnerable, 

incapable of caring about

or taking actions to improve

the people’s lives. The key

to his transparency is projection. 

Whatever he says, especially 

any accusations he makes, 

are projections of his neurosis.

 

When he accuses Kamala 

of being ill-educated, a threat

to democracy, an unhinged

and corrupt person, guess who

he’s really talking about. 

Why couldn’t the American

people see this? His niece,

Mary Trump, a clinical

psychologist, told us often 

enough. George Conway, 

who knew the man, warned 

how dangerous he is, 

as did a host of others.

 

Yet Trump’s compulsive

behavior doesn’t register

with average voters, to them

it is just the coastal elite’s

snooty language—“narcissim,” 

“projection,” what’s that got

to do with the price of groceries?

Some don’t “like” the man, 

but can’t see he is out of

his megalomaniacal mind.

——————

The Reign of Donald the Mad

 

Above all don’t normalize it,

don’t act like this is a temporary

aberration and that in two or four

years our democracy will right

itself and be back on track.

 

What this election proves is that we

are not the people we think we are

or pretend to be, talk of American

exceptionalism was always suspect,

but now we are exceptional in all

 

the wrong ways: our mass shootings,

obesity, greed, the list goes on. 

Germany had more cause to vote for 

Hitler than we had to re-elect Trump.

How’s that for exceptionalism?

 

Whatever Trump does as president

will not be in the national interest,

he is addicted to adulation and only

wants revenge, to settle old scores.

 

The majority of his cabinet picks

are chosen to sabotage departments,

female nominees for looks and loyalty, 

ineptitude is a plus. He’ll promote

craven generals to do his bidding.

 

Sycophants will run the country,

Ukraine blamed and betrayed,

climage change denied, fat cats

will feast on plenty of tax cuts,

migrants brutally deported.

 

Trump’s evil genius is to bring

out the worse in us. Abe Lincoln

called upon the better angels

of our nature, Trump unleashes,

to our shame, the exact opposite.  

 

——————