Prisons and Parks

We went to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp when I was in Europe. The camp was repainted, and blended in with the resplendent country side. It was horrible. The people I was with didn't even care.

Sometimes beauty is disgusting, 

Blood better left for rusting.

To what extent do we despair humanity?

In all its insanity.

Feelings lost on shallow players

Felt for seconds,

Then, life beckons.

The whimpers of history fall on the deaf ears

Of an empty generation:

Equip with crumbled, selfish, hearts

and photo evidence.

Just take your picture

So you can forget

With a clear conscience

As if its not our regret

A universal human fault

Lies become omission

The inevitable human condition

that wretched old thing,

doesn't pull a heart string

Nothing begs to beg the question

Is that humanity?

Is that me?

No lasting impression

Smile for the statue

Then forget everything it asks you

Where ghost wouldn't even stay

A buildings just a building 

Anyway.

Walk the steep steps 

To the graveyard turned park

Manicured

Grass trimmed in spots

And nobody's heart drops

Like a broken person might

In a dark and desperate game of dominos

So it goes

But why would it? Should it?

There is nothing left here.

Nothing left to fear.

Isn't there?

Take off the mask.

See the horror beauty hides

Hang it in the out of place cafe

Where people go

After they've come 

Just to say they came.

Reviews

[The Twin Arenas]

Some people are jackoffs. In a way, it's fitting that some people don't care. That's kind of how it happened.

[dan]

Siobahn, I've never been to a former concentration camp but I have been to Arlington National Cemetery, where thousands of American war heroes are interred. Lots of people everywhere, but you could hear a pin drop. Hardly anyone was talking, out of reverence for the place and its ghosts. I don't know how anyone can visit a place where so many were murdered in the name of racial profiling and war's horror...and NOT be humbled by the magnitude of what went on there.
A tremendous and feeling write, well done! take care...dan

[EileenMarie]

I didn't read your opening line under your name and was going to say it almost describes depression. You may look great on the outside but:
Take of the mask, see the horror beauty hides.

However after reading it again I can feel what you saw when you were there. Very emotionally powerful write!