My Father Was a Nazi (Hybrid Ballad)

My father worked at Dachau
In an office in the mud
He passed the wires
And hungry fires
So he might do the sums

He had a bent-up clipboard
And a cabinet filled with files
He knew their names
And saw their pains
But my father did not smile

And when the soldiers got there
And saw he had not fled
And saw the cars
And prison bars
They shot him through the head

My father was at Shiloh
With nothing on his heels
For mountain stones
Had forged his bones
Into living steel

But even stones couldn’t stop
A bullet made of words
Aimed at killers
Behind white pillars
That he had never heard

They threw him in a gaping hole
With all who were to blame.
As his foes
Got neat, white rows
The earth ate his very name

My father walked a jungle trail
Along the Song Tra Bong
When burning rain
Watered the plains
And fell among a throng

Of children simply in the way
Who fled along his trail
And who were caught
With one quick shot
That proved his coffin’s nails

A prison of photography
Made him eat a barrel
For who could bear
To have to share
His face with children's peril?

My father was a mountaineer
My father was a banker
My father drove a wrecking ball
And fixed an oil tanker

My father was a murderer
My father was a hero
My father was Abe Lincoln
And my father’s name was Nero

My father has a thick accent
My father owns a gun
My father is a white man
And my father has been hung