Hidden.

Some of course 
saw it coming
(so they said afterwards
in interviews) 

Hidden.

Forgotten voices
lost in the shadows 
of the trains

Writing secret prayers
looking into the eyes
of the executioner.

Fritz’s dad said they 
all knew about it
but excluded it 
from their thoughts

Transcending their guilt
into a helpless form 
of suffering, 

Walking around the next corner
when they saw it happen
only to carry on walking 
no matter how hard they saw
some of the people being beat

Barbara thought it would 
just be the men dragged away
but instead saw her mother 

Whipped in the middle 
of the street 
like a horse,

then her Aunt 

and they stood there laughing

and laughing

and laughing

and laughing. 

Hidden.

Michael recalls the way 
they were banned from 
walking on the main street
under the threat of death

then the parks

swimming pools

and even cinemas
and theatres

Forcing them backwards 
over invisible white lines, 

step by step 

And the way people
then started getting hung  
over the most minor 
of things

Hidden. 

thrust head over legs
across streets
and alleyways
in plain sight
with splintered force

Dark speckled 
plunged into meat wagons
banked into hell

Laceworked with knives

Airbrushed from history.

Hidden.  

 

 

(A extract from a up and coming split book with Nick Armbrister due out in September 2016 - Europa II which talks about the reality of war in quite powerful detail)