Poem: Killing your Hidden Hitler

I don’t mean to be

Quite so severe

But sometimes

There is a little dictator

Who storms inside of me

Shoving aside all of my silent Buddhas

To judge the world with all the glistening severity

Of a pristine guillotine

Come here, let me weight your hearts

But you can never take a look at my own

Perfumed with maggots and hungry fungi

How can love creep out

So smothered with vines?

So I try and smother my general

Putting him behind prison bars

Endeavouring to starve him of hatred

By force-feeding him kind words and deeds

But, he still puts up a stubborn fight

Careening around the caverns of my skull, screaming:

“HATE, JEALOUSY, INTOLERANCE, CRUELTY”

As an intoxicating mantra of violence

Silly, silly, inner Hitler

Isn’t it about time for you

To go kill yourself in your bunker?

I don’t care how much of my body’s rent you pay

But if you want to remain

Cohabitant of my consciousness

Then you’re going to have to learn how to love