free-verse88 lines

The New Master

by Pat O'Cotter

As one who lays aside a task, where one has ruled alone,

I lay aside the crown of hell, and give to you my throne;

As one who feels his race is run, whose day is of the past,

I recognize your genius, and abdicate at last.

I go and leave you master, and I feel it's just as well,

For Hades lacks its master, until you rule in hell.

The world wags on and changes, old methods now seem weak,

And the changes of a thousand years, of these I fain would speak.

I've raised and sponsored many names, that darken history's page,

I've made them rulers of the world in many a by-gone age.

They all have shown a human turn, from Nero down to you,

But now my life-long dream of a super fiend at last seems coming true.

I've watched you since the faintest spark blazed in your mother's womb,

I've watched your hypocritic grief, beside your father's tomb;

I know the tainted blood that flows thru your each and every vein

That shows up in your withered arm, and feeds your fevered brain.

I saw it in your grandsire, where first it cropped out plain

When German gold was squandered to slay the honest Dane.

I fed you dreams of empire, and dreams of lust and greed

And the age old lust of conquest that taints all of your breed.

The strain that showed in Nero, cropped out alike in you,

You killed your gentle mother, but not as Nero slew.

I gave you hate of Albion, for all the world will tell

That could I kill that Anglo strain, I'd use the earth for hell.

I loathe the Anglo-Saxon race, I hate their English speech,

For where the Union Jack waves high, the Cross will ever reach.

Their ignorant millions till the soil, for they protect their own,

I hate it for I've never had this ensign for mine own.

I taught you how to use God's church, I built the path you trod,

I filled your mouth until you claimed, a pardnership with God.

I told you tales to tell to men, I coached you every hour

Until an egomaniac ran wild, mad with a lust for power.

I made an army for you then, the peer of all war lords,

I smiled the night you went away to visit Norway fiords.

I knew your Bagdad railway schemes, I knew the Austrian claims,

I knew that German gold would guide the mad assassin's aims.

I knew the schemes that you had planned, the one that nothing curbs,

I envied your diplomacy that blamed it on the Serbs.

My brain ne'er hatched a finer scheme, your armies marking time

And then the rape of Belgium, your premier man-sized crime.

And if one deals in hellish schemes, that one must stamp your worth,

You made a shambles of that land, you moved hell up on earth.

The cries of mangled maidens, the mutilated child,

The tears of butchered mothers, would drive an earth man wild,

And thru it all proclaiming, you were the tool of God--

O pardner in this orgy, no one suspected fraud.

You butchered, maimed and pillaged, hell never saw such sights

As the Prussian Guard remembers, on those first Belgian nights.

O shades of maddened Nero and his early Christian fires,

Could he have been in Belgium and have seen your funeral pyres!

Could he have seen your orgies he would have wept for shame

But had he your fiendish cunning, he might have done the same.

But the hated Saxon balked you and the desperate fighting Frank

Hurled back our super devils and took us on the flank.

Your inbred tainted offspring lost his chances at Verdun

Where curtained steel just saved the world from the grip of brutal Hun.

But Wilhelm, you are crafty, you are mine own I ween

Your fertile brain had brought to life the hell-born submarine,

You killed the unarmed merchantmen, you murdered in the dark,

You sent the child and mother to feed your friend the shark.

The world grew sick with wonder, no voice was raised to laud

And still you did it in your name, the name of you and God.

Where you have trod the world is dead, no sign of life or mirth,

You beat me, Bill, you beat my hell, with this of yours on earth.

You won hell's admiration and of all of mine own folk

When you paired off with the ghastly Turk, that was a master stroke.

And all the things you did before, just now seem weak and tame

Since you launched that Dardanelles campaign of pillage, lust and shame.

To fuss thus with my chosen race, my ally since time dates

Proclaimed that Kultur and the Turk are well matched running mates.

And tho I've watched hell's orgies, and stood by in fiendish glee,

I quit you, Bill, these Turkish stunts are far too much for me.

When officers from Kultur's class stand by and watch a Turk

Just disembowel a mother, why, Bill, it makes me shirk.

It makes me shudder and I've watched the master fiends of hell,

But none of them have brains like you, none do their work so well.

When Turk and German flood with oil, then set a school ablaze

And bayonet the babies, as they stumble thru the haze,

I yield the crown to you, Dear Bill, my pupil passes me

You take the r'le of Master and your pupil I will be.

I've worked for hell's best interests, my master now appears

For when your name is mentioned, the imps break into cheers.

The gavel of the poor damned souls, that long has rung their knell,

Is passed to you, I abdicate and now you rule in hell.

For years I've done the best I could, now I realize I'm thru,

And in the future I'm content to live and learn from you.

Your earthly work is finished, soon in hell you'll carve your name

And I shudder when I realize that hell won't be the same.