Barbarity Blues

But nothing is more ruinous: the scentless bouquet, the institutionalised remembrance, kills what still lingers by the very act of preserving it. — Adorno

I watched the space where the girl was
The way she seemed my age but had deep dark eyes

Her skin, a blue colour, gave me a jump
Her mouth tainted blood

The only light of candles that view a lot
Of old-looking weapons: Two-handed battle axes 

And the suits of armour that dropped them
Accidentally-on-purpose as we passed beneath

The day kept getting colder and warmer, warmer and colder 
Like we were playing a children’s game of hide-the-thing

And the torture chamber that didn’t want to let us go
Iron maidens pretending to be service robots

Then the tourguide saluted each member
Of the Blue Race that haunted the place

        One elemental, mischievous kobold
        Mid-toned, sintered with 
        Alumina at 1200 degrees and highly toxic
        Mined by African children for use in smartphones

        And warmer, one originally made with lapis lazuli

        Then the latecomer, with more a bias towards green
        A copper cyan the colour of nothing in nature
        Possibly causing birth defects

        Finally 
        One bound to iron prepared as a colloidal dispersion
        Ironically only somewhat toxic

        Scattered the light particles

White and blue was discarded, despite its admirable aesthetic appeal—as being the colours of an individual German Federal State—a State that, unfortunately, through its political attitude of particularist narrow-mindedness did not enjoy a good reputation. And, generally speaking, with these colours it would have been difficult to attract attention to our movement

The car disgorged its cattle 
Whose gold teeth were pulled and beaten there and then 
By those same cattle, at gunpoint
Into leaf for gilding horns they were made to wear 
In mockery of Moses

And we witnessed an auto da fe
With faggots bound for kindling
Fat ones at the bottom, a grease tray to catch the dripping 
To be manufactured into human trope

        By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various
        colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions

This way, you’ll see what I mean… Just then a bomb took out most of our group. Signalling for the survivors to follow, our guide led the way to a building that looked like an old air raid shelter. It was already packed with blue people, ten to a square metre, but he cried out “There’s room for one more,” and so I followed him, my little blue coat flapping against the black and white background


        And two-week-old paschal veal calves dumped
        Into a flaming hole that never filled up
        The third, the little one that was “just right”
        While others were taken for experiments
        And subsequently dumped in fields
        Genitals and anuses excised with surgical
        Precision, blood completely drained, internal
        Organs the texture of peanut butter

When I woke up my brain had damage
My body parts never came up

        Yet soon this place was utterly demolished
        Except for a herm at each of its four corners
        Beneath a cerulean sky