Bitterness - edit

[Richard]

Hey Duke,
I quite like this piece and do have some notes below.

Bitterness -I like the title a lot because it ties together the ideas of bitter medicine from one's childhoods to accepting awful things from political leaders because people want to believe they're working in their best interests, like the medicine. 


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. -This is a good line that foreshadows people's questionable actions that we see in the parts about accepting leadership's poor choices.

For children learn that bitter remedies -I wonder if you should use a different word than "bitter" here, since you already sort of used it in your title. 
their parents make them take are for their good,
administered with love, and after all
those nauseating flavors made them well. -Would love a specific example of a nauseating flavor. I remember an awful medicine from my childhood that tasted like the fakest banana.

Just so a fascist nation perseveres -I like that the poem changes its focus using a word like "just" instead of something more expected like a "but" or "yet." I also assume that the word "just" was used for ironic purposes as well. Nicely done. 
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 -Again, I would suggest using a different word than "bitter" here so the bitterness of the title stands out more. 
to Party, endless war, death from above
because their Leader once had shown them love. -I never even noticed that the last 2 lines rhymed until I read this for the third time, so I think that's a sign of a solid rhyme. 

Overall, this poem is built on a great concept and is strong as it is. Most of my points are more nitpicks than anything. Nice work

Cheers,
Richard