2011/03/04 Ruining Her Life Poem by Margaret Alice

Alice attended an advanced class where Hitler
was in charge, presenting a piece to read with
numbers in it, of course Alice could not make
head or tail of it, simply informed the class that
preserving unused languages has curiosity value
only, preventing those using it from communicating
as if enclosed in prison

But Hitler insisted Alice had to answer questions
about numbers; Alice still could not after listening
to the lesson three times in a row, then Hitler and
her only fellow student decided to stone Alice for
her heathen, unlinguistic views of extinct languages
and their immense value

Today Alice is at her desk in the office of Madame
La Pompadour, a headache making Alice squint
and she realised she had changed into Quasimodo
ages ago, it was he who attended class for her,
ruining her life – or what was left of it

**************************
Attempting to live up to Hitler’s ideals of a well-
rounded, modern person, Alice listened to news
read in French on BBC Africa, the more she lis-
tened, the more she morphed into Quasimodo

Hands changing into claws, hunchback more pro-
inent, nothing left of the original Alice essence as
words on the terrible human condition and violation
of human rights destroy original being

She fought back with L’Histoire Sans Fin enacted on
DVD, no more BBC, no more Hitler, she will join the
intermediate class where her stupid Quasimodo-mode
will not make her the class dunce

All the time…