THE BUNKER POEMS

NOTE:
These poems are the result of years of study and is based on historical sources. These poems examine what happened during the last days of Hitler. They do not, in any way, endorse or champion Nazi ideology. Although I have studied this era in-depth, I support the dictum that the Holocaust and the Second World War were atrocities for which Hitler bears greatest responsibility. My heroes are Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Eisenhower, not Hitler, Mussolini, Goring or Himmler. These poems try to explain the evil that occurred during this time period, not to justify the evil that occurred. Thank you for your interest, and please feel free to message me with any questions or comments.

These poems are dedicated to the victims of terror and oppression throughout history, and those still suffering around the world today.

Berlin Doesn't Care

Der Fuehrer is back from the frontlines:

Berlin doesn't care. It continues in its somber and steadfast

march towards extinction.

The crowds that once greeted

are hidden in the rubble.

The capital greets its leader with a silent moan,

not a cheer.

Der Fuehrer is back from the frontlines;

Berlin doesn't care.

The bitter rhetoric of Queen Margaret is heard in the wind:

Where be the bending peers that flattered thee?

Where be the thronging soldiers that followed thee?

Where is the city that glorified thee?

Can it be found in the rubble?

Hitler doesn't care.

The Descent

Valet in tow, Wolf retreats to his secret lair,

Down the concrete steps to his tomb.

Alone, betrayed, and without hope,

rambling to anyone who will listen,

screaming away opposition,

sobbing to his pillow.

Wolf slinks underground

hoping the Russian tanks might

forget him in their bloody advance.

As he paces his spartan quarters,

a sharp longing for Berchestagen erupts

in his chest, a longing to see the mountains

and beauty of Bavaria.

Yet he confides to no one

as he shuffles down the steps

to his mausoleum,

to his hell.

"Send for that bloody doctor."

There must be a pill

to dull such pain.

Someone Loves Me

Adi was glowing,

the burden on his shoulder lightened

for a brief, idyllic spell.

His eyes glisten with tears as

he walks round the bunker with his trophy,

presenting her to all….the one who had

returned for him.

The trophy blushes modestly, as befits a Munich handmaiden.

His voice lightens, that of a bird

in spring rather than the deep rasp

of a growling Wolf.

It seemed to say:

Goebbels has Magda,

Goering has Emmy,

Himmler has his Frauchen

Keitel has his…

But somebody loves me too!

A change from all these false,

dissimulation nobodies.

who buzz around him like flies.

This woman was his and no one else's;

as he looks at her smiling and

chatting with the fleas and maggots of his tomb

he feels the stirrings of something within him…

Guilt?

The Wolf devours it and savours the

moment:

Adi's trophy shines brighter than any in

Germany.

Goodbye Doctor

Goodbye Doctor, says Hitler to Morrell:

Your pills served me well, but it's over now,

There is no place for a quack in my tomb.

You had better flee…

The Russian's have cages for people like you;

they have a golden one with silver bars for me…

They want to parade me naked through Moscow,

have Stalin come down the Kremlin steps and spit on me

and laugh his deep, peasant laugh.

Goodbye Doctor, says Hitler to Morrell.

There is no pill for me now,

as the cards all collapse

and I am crushed beneath.

Aspirin or morphine won't do at all,

cyanide is all that's left for me..

A capsule and a bullet

will cure all.

Goodbye Doctor, says Hitler to Morrell.

It's time you were on your way,

Goebbels is coming and he needs

a room and you are in his way!

I hope you find the American zone,

they will treat you far better, I'm told.

Goodbye Doctor.

Ghost

Like a ghost Hitler walks the underground labyrinth of his tomb

slouching, one leg trailing, graying, old and decaying.

His eyes speak the language of death,

no more strength left in his broken body.

He is left alone with his thoughts

to wander the corridors of his coffin.

What hell is this?

From feared and respected tyrant to a decaying spirit,

who might fade into the Prussian walls.

half-alive with only the strength to keep walking

endlessly…each step one closer to the end.

He's Mine

He, who conquered the country.

he, who almost conquered all of Europe.

is mine,

muses Fräulein Braun.

She is fiercely protective of her man;

he sips apple peel tea

slumped in his chair,

glossy eyed,

graying, weak.

Not exactly a Teutonic Knight,

but mine, and mine alone.

In this castle of concrete

we unite for eternity.

and then I shall throw myself

on his funeral pyre.

He, who conquered the world

is mine.

Der Fuehrer Doesn't Like Girls Who Smoke

She stood in the cratered courtyard

inhaling smoke and burnt flesh,

listening to the rumbling advance,

cigarette in hand,

coolly puffing away.

A shadow emerges from the grave,

face and heart carved,

from granite,

a skull on his breast.

He sees her smoking calmly

unnerved by his presence.

He puffs up

like a cornered feline

ready to pounce.

"Der Fuehrer doesn't like girls who smoke."

"Der Fuehrer isn't here," she responds with quiet defiance.

He goes on and on

like a sermonizing priest,

talking of defiling a sacred

temple of German blood

with impure substances.

All the time she continues

puffing away.

A thunderstorm of shells

interrupts his harangue

and then he strides away

with purpose and contempt,

leaving her, content to puff

away on her cigarette.

The Bunker Rat

At lunch with Fräulein Braun and the secretaries

Wolf is in fine form,

recalling his own days as a soldier.

During the day he fought men;

at night he hunted trench rats,

who, big as cats, would crawl amongst

the men, steal their food and chew on their toes.

He would the rodents with his spear and

Fuschl would join in the battle, leaping on the beasts

tearing them to bits, then lay the mangled corpses at his master's feet as a gift

Fräulein Braun, though faking horror as a simple Bavarian girl ought,

wished she had a spear so she could stab a rat.

One with a big nose who was everywhere at all times,

who slinked through corridors without a sound,

whose bite could kill,

whose eyes shone in the dark, terrifying all by their

hellish glow.

Yes, thought Fräulein Braun,

stabbing Borman with a spear

and laying him at dear Adolf's feet

would be most satisfying.

Her little contribution to the war!

She sighed:

with target practice,

maybe she could kill a Cossack.

Doferl's Night

He's alone,

they're all gone to sleep.

Alone with his thoughts.

Adi gets into bed,

not tired, but what can one do?

He closes his eyes for a moment,

he hears someone breathing hard,

there is the smell of whisky…

The man has found him.

After all these years of running and

he has finally been caught by HIM!

"Who is there?" Doferl rasps,

though he knows damn well who it is.

"Leave me alone!" he screams.

He has conquered Europe but

nothing can save him now.

"Go away!"

There is a shadow approaching

closer, closer…

A man with a whip in his hand

closer…closer…

"Guensche! Guensche!"
Reality pinpricks the dream,

he is saved.

His soldier-nurse holds him

shaking all over,

crying in the dark.

Klara, Klara, Klara

Adolf had two possessions: portraits,

one of Frederick the Great and one of his mother.

Frederick and Klara.

He would look at his hands and compare them

to those of the Prussian King

and then he would look at his mother.

A saint. His loving mother,

butchered by a Jewish doctor.

He was her Doferl, her dear Adi,

Klara's favorite, above all the others.

even HIM.

He remembered how she would give him

extra servings at dinner,

how she would favor him with a smile

and when HE was gone, she would

take her dear Doferl into bed with her

and touch him, and call him her sweet

Adi, her dearest child, her little man.

"KLARA!"

They freeze.

"KLARA!"

Footsteps…closer!

"KLARA!"

And then…

Discovered…the cry of rage,

the pain, the horrible pain, the screams,

How he messed on the bed, the pain was so bad.

Shouting, screams, pain…

His mother,

her eyes still haunted him.

Blondi

Man and bitch

walk in the courtyard,

followed by their

black protectors.

The rumbling grows closer…

but these two don't pay

any attention.

Silent memories:

walks in the mountains,

in the swamps of Rastenburg.

Blondi and Adi

walk in circles in this

cemetery of hopes and dreams.

Adolf is slumping; he doesn't

have any tricks to teach his friend,

no games to play.

With his Alsatian bitch he can

be himself; no speeches for Blondi.

Wolf sniffed to himself;

isn't it sad to think my only friend

is a dog?

Happy Birthday Mein Fuhrer

Like ants, the Nazi elite scurry underground

to pay homage to their sovereign.

They eat slices of chocolate cake,

fawning over their leader;

even in his tomb they seek

honey words from their leader.

They celebrate his fifty-sixth

year of hellish life

that has sunk Europe

knee deep in blood, rubble and destruction.

A man whose rule has destroyed a nation,

whose crusade to purify Europe has brought

misery to the entire continent.

The Nazi insects dance their perverse last

death throes and, as doom closes in,

they touch antennas with their king.

Enter the Children

The lie-maker, Goebbels brings his family to throw

on the funeral pyre.

unsuspecting they follow their mother underground

To their concrete tomb.

One carries a teddy bear, another a book, another

a spinning top.

The children's' laughter seems out-of-place

in Hitler's home.

People grasp it desperately

trying to distract themselves

from the darkness that surrounds them

The children are like sugar

in a bitter tea.

A guard sees them pass and salutes them:

these angels from heaven who have descended into hell.

Hitler's City

He sits and broods.

Before him lies a model of Berlin,

the Reich's First city.

Even as all collapses he does not abandon his dream,

his yearning, artistic vision of a new Berlin.

He shuffles buildings, makes new streets, new monuments,

as if he was a God presiding over an imaginary land.

His art has already devastated his country;

his vision has already ravaged a continent.

He sits before his city,

playing the architect deity as millions die

for him and because of him.

The Führer.

The artist of death.

The landscaper of rubble.

The architect of destruction.

The builder of hate, murder, and hellish monstrosity.

The Eminence Grise

Martin Borman, Hitler's faithful flunky

melts into the grey concrete walls,

Hitler's Richelieu, his Wolsey.

This cardinal of death,

power-broker and manipulator.

Even in the end will he will

eat the meat of the corpses that

surround him.

The Children Play

Hedda, Heidi, Helga, Helmut, Holde, Hilde

play; Uncle Hitler is with his generals.

On the stairs one can hear laughter.

"Here let you be a Russian and me be a German." speaks Helmut to Heidi

"I want to be a German!" Heidi pouts.

Such fantasies are not left to children.

Down below Hitler dreams of armies that shall deliver him,

"Where is Steiner?!" Hitler screams.

"Ok Heidi you can be a German. Holde and I will be Russians."

While Hitler broods and tries to wake from his nightmare;

the children are care-free; laughter and fantasies are the order of the day.

Below, Hitler too languishes in a dream world as he moves armies

around on the map.

The games continue.

Betrayed

Hitler screams wildly, veins standing out on his neck.

He plays the part of a Caesar,

stabbed to death by his senators,

though his wounds are merely ones of pride.

Two Brutuses, Himmler and Goering

have cut him to the quick.

"Treachery!" accompanies Borman

Eager to tear more flesh from the decaying empire.

Hitler shaking, turns away and muses,

"Even Jesus was betrayed the night before his death!"

Such messianic quotes are some comfort:

Himmler, Goering,

the foundation crumbles…

The Judases!

How he would act if he were not in this tomb!

Memories return to the bomb plot of the generals,

how he had hung the traitors from meat hooks.

Now all he can do is send telegrams like a spider

desperately trying to build a web to trap his flies.

"My Reich, my Reich." sobs Hitler.

All is truly lost.

The Marriage

This last dance of death.

"Till death do us part"

swear Hitler and his bride.

Braun sheds tears;

he is hers for a day,

her polka dot dress, his favorite, is the perfect for

their funeral pyre.

Wine is sipped, congratulations exchanged,

The artillery accompanies the wedding dance,

fitting for the wedding of Europe's tyrant.

Hitler at Rest

Late in the night Hitler finally joins his bride of a day.

They lie together in silence

listening to the music of the Russian artillery closing in.

Adolf twitches irritably,

as if trying to chase away this horrific nightmare.

He tries to think of better days,

days when Europe trembled at his feet,

when the continent had been almost his!

How did it all collapse on him like

a hollow pack of cards?

He wants to weep, but will not.

Eva is here.

She will not see him cry, he asserts control over his emotions.

He lies back again and listened to the artillery drawing closer,

one night left in this symphony of madness.

Viewing the Troops

The band of soldiers stand at attention;

the Führer emerges to inspect them,

his last public service.

Wolf emerges from his lair for one last time,

he moves down the line shaking hands

with mere boys.

Where were the days when legions of men

had marched past him?

Tear well in his eyes as he sees the solemn children's faces,

no older than Goebbels' brats.

He pats one little boy on the cheek,

trying to draw strength from their firm, idealistic youth,

the last soldiers of his Reich.

The Last Supper

He eats slowly, hands shaking.

His last meal.

A simple pasta and salad,

attended by two secretaries.

who have vowed to die with him.

What thoughts go through his mind?

A somber last formal function,

he stays detached, almost not present.

An enigma.

Whatever his thoughts, he does not speak.

Sleep and eating are just bodily functions for him.

They have long ceased to bring him any pleasure.

Simple light-hearted chatter goes on around him.

He does not process it anymore.

He does not speak for once.

His days of oration are over.

The last supper of a tyrant thus passes without event.

And though he does not eat meat,

he is a carnivore who devoured a country, a continent,

and choked, retching venom and bile everywhere.

The last supper.

Eva's Last Moments

He slumps on the sofa,

rubbing his fingers together,

his glazed eyes stare ahead lifelessly.

She is in the bathroom running water.

She emerges and comes over to the couch,

stands beside it for a moment, her hands trembling,

before sitting down close enough to inhale his musty odor.

She glances in his direction

then furtively looks away.

There is nothing to say now.

But then there has never been much to say.

He was always the one who talked,

and now he has nothing left to lecture on :

we are defeated, almost everyone else has betrayed him.

Everything he has built has crashed down around him:

his party, his nation, his empire.

Without looking at her, he takes her hand in his

limp grip and pats it with indifferent affection.

They both try to ignore the thunderous crashes above them,

ominously hinting at what is approaching.

She tries to drink in this last moment.

At last he is hers after all these years,

but it is an empty triumph and one that is short-lived.

They are waiting outside the door,

they are waiting above,

they are waiting around the world.

She chose this, there is no escape now.

So they sit in silence,

waiting for nothing but the momentum

to end it all.

The Shot Rang Out

The shot rang out.

The tyrant is dead.

Slumped dead on a couch, wife at his side.

The funeral pyre of the Führer

will be just one of many around Europe.

Corpses lie throughout the continent;

at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Dachau;

at Stalingrad, Normandy and Berlin.

The blood oozing from his temple is but a drop

in an ocean of blood;

arms, legs, torsos lie scattered throughout the land.

Adolf Hitler is dead!

And Europe, still engrossed in his war,

adds one more body to the continent's funeral pyre.

Goodnight Children

Father Goebbels says goodnight children.

Magda tucks them in,

not before giving them a bedtime treat of chocolate,

a magic chocolate that brings eternal sleep.

Goodnight children.

Tears well in her eyes as she puts each babe to sleep,

a kiss on each forehead.

"Will you kiss bear too, Mama?" one asks.

Magda kisses Bear.

Father Goebbels slinks in some dark corner, smoking furiously.

Women are stronger;

Himmler had told him that once in a lecture about Nazi breeding programs.

So Magda was left to put her babes to sleep:

Goodnight Heidi.

Goodnight Helmut.

Goodnight Holde.

Goodnight Hilde.

Goodnight Helga.

Goodnight Hedde.

Goodnight children, sleep forever more,

rise angels, rise from this hellish nightmare!

As the living dead wander the corridors,

they try not to remember

the sound of children's laughter

that once echoed through Hitler's hellish mausoleum.

The zombies prepare their own deaths,

while the living await deliverance

and judgement.

The Funeral Pyre

The tyrant and his one day bride; corpses side by side

in a crater filled courtyard.

Shells falling announcing the rumbling approach of the Cossacks.

Someone throws a match and the bodies alight in hellish flame,

The party salutes and stands in silence as the angry

fire devours the bodies with a vengeance,

taking on a spirit of its own, an angry demon that will have no mercy.

The party stands at attention.

The Fuhrer is dead.

The Reich is dead

The pyre shines brightly as a promise for the future.

A man is dead.

His horrific dream is dead.

His bloodthirsty rule, like the hungry flame devoured Europe, scorched the continent

with his angry hate, killed millions to feed his monstrous dream.

The Fuhrer is dead.

The Reich is dead.

An era is over.

FINIS