Bitterness - edit

[dukealien]

edit;


Bitterness


Making pills and button batteries
taste awful is an insufficient ward
to keep a child from swallowing them down;
nor does it work with rainbow laundry pods.

For children learn unpleasant remedies
their parents make them take are for their good,
administered with love, and after all
those gag-inducing spoonfuls made them well.

Just so a fascist nation perseveres
in following its Leaders, for at first
they made trains run, and even money worth
face value and those envied Kulaks gone.

Then, as grim loss of liberty proceeds,
they still embrace their bitter servitude
to Party, endless war, death from above
because their Leader once had shown them love.

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@Richard - Thanks for the encouraging critique.  I've made changes to S2 to avoid "bitterness" and make the repulsive flavor more specific (to me, the chalky mint stuff that left a long-lasting bad taste in the mouth was the worst).  But I did leave "bitter" in S4 -it sounds so well with "embrace" and "servitude" I'd almost rather change the title.  And by S4 the title is pretty far away...?