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Share your poetry on currently unfolding Russo-Ukrainian war in the comments section below. We received a large response on our first post of poetry on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February and our second one. Poets are still actively submitting on this topic, so here is your chance again to share your poetry.
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The Rock Climbers By Cal Wes Ubideer I saw them climbing up the gray-white, rocky mountain hills, like any mountain...
. Monica's Consolation for Margaret Coats, who introduced me to St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and his mother, St. Monica...
The music got cranked up, da capo— The audience cried “Oh please, stop, Oh! The prize-winning song Is just half-assed…
Susan, that is very timely. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Jan, thank you very much for your encouraging comment. I'm so glad you enjoyed the poems and especially glad they…
Not quite a win, Theresa, but thank you for the thought, and congratulations yourself on your "Finalist' status for your…
A Slippery Victory There once was a prize for the best, Though merit was hardly the test. The winner was…
Doing the Right Thing
Ukraine is a distraction and a scam.
The deep state has a very bloody hand.
Democracy? They do not give a damn.
They cheat and prosper just because they can.
They’re making loads on ammo and on arms.
Every politician’s a patrician.
They’re cleaning up on Ukraine bio farms
Forget the children and vaccine attrition.
As long as they can suck the people dry,
They’re killing, smiling, riding mighty high.
Thanks, Mike, for this bite back at the backroom cigar smokers.
I think that these too are ‘a distraction and a scam’ – ( a wholloping first line, by the way).
I look at them as willing gainers doing the deeds of demons.
They are ignorant of any perspective and so are bought off by the miasma of gain and the elation and elevation they feel when ‘killing, smiling, riding mighty high’.
Good that you lift the lid.
BAREFOOT IN UKRAINE
Barefoot with no worries
I step in the marshy sand
Across fields of flowers
To green warm grass I stand.
The ground starts to tremble,
to shake and to groan.
Is this an earthquake to remember,
or is something more sinister wrong?
Barefoot I start running
away from the trembling ground
away from the toxic smoke
Without looking round.
They said it wouldn’t happen,
that we would all get along.
We speak the same language,
sometimes sing the same song.
Because of Putin’s madness,
we are caught in a war unwanted.
This war will bring terrible sadness,
startling the free world undaunted.
Barefoot with more fear,
I can’t run and hide.
Saving all who are near,
I can help turn the tide.
Mary Helen Roper
May 28, 2022
Ukraine, May 2022
My eyes are dry. I cannot cry,
I hear the pregnant planes drop by
their dust and bombs. Uneaten crumbs
of homes show faces without gums
and down the road, in helmet skulls,
hard men load tubes from truck-load-fulls.
Then, drubbing thumps, screeched mortar shells
roll in the future’s burial bells.
Then, wind takes up and bears the grit
of bits of people hit and split,
of streets disabled, car-dead, charred,
civilisation’s collapsed facade.
Some move off to stay alive,
they’ll know their end when they arrive.
They had safe homes, now they have none,
their rooms spread out by shell and bomb.
They’re forced to roam passed battered things
beneath death-planes and scared birds’ wings.
On damaged streets where scraped hope lies,
their hearts are lifted in surprise —
some special people smile unbowed —
not fearless, heroes, nor a crowd —
just confident to keep their mind
to being true, forbearing, kind.
They hand to strangers that they meet
isolated on the street —
Falun flowers from Taiwan
with deep belief beyond the span
of madness or tranquility.
They feel that here’s where they should be
while past and present crash as one
to something new to carry on.
They know that gods have partial views
and, like humans, have to choose
on narrow paths of myriad ways
in seeming route-less ends of days.
N O T E
please view posts about Falun Gong practitioners in Ukraine
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/5/26/201517.html
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/5/14/201035.html
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2021/5/22/193258.html
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/5/22/201447.html
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/5/31/201618.html
Prince Putin wield’s royalty’s rod
And an orb that means all under God;
The sickle and hammer
Have overblown glamour,
And to a good leader seem odd.
Ukraine, May 2022 ( Part II )
But ‘end of days’ is just a phase,
a twist through which surge endless ways,
immersing tides of ‘wells’ and ‘goods’,
of new beginnings’ opening buds
where countless paths of shafts of light
fly out of mists both clear and white
and mountain depths of clouds new born
float tinged with pinks of warming dawn
revealing real at center stage
pure power of the present age,
divinity’s reviving storm,
the vast Creator’s cosmic form—
His grand tsunamis’ pearl-tipped push
with iridescent soundscapes rush,
repeat beyond mere whales and birds,
each note thesaurusing like words
forecasting sites were futures flow
from thoughts the Maker’s glories show :
so every being takes their course
from this immeasurable source
and feels the fill of all they know
and through this single spring they grow,
each to their ability
to wear their principality.
These Falun Dafa followers
see their great Creator bears
a Buddha shape of endless size
invigorating seas and skies
and all complexities of space
that simply pour from His full face
that gives them cues to find their fate
and whites out every human trait
to make good beings merge in air,
their lives left in His judgement’s care
so all good lifts into the light
so all is light, as light as light.
Cautionary verses for Ukraine
In twenty-twenty-two on twenty-four two
Putin sent forces in order to subdue
A democratic neighbour for a pretext untrue
With a special operation the military was tasked
Their unflinching co-operation Russian savagery unmasked
Informed by the internet TRUTH one can see
How utterly ruthless Russians can be
Instruction intolerable destruction deplorable
Children killed or with millions made flee
The invasion is harming not only Ukraine
But many dependent on its exports of grain
Instances of inhumanity numerously befall
And by distancing Christianity indubitably appall
Greeting Card Lyric : I.D. Internal Displacement
Again I’m thumped by this strong man.
He’s strong but broken by a war
that hurt elsewhere when it began
but now the whole world feels it, raw.
He storms at me, explodes, fists rain.
I dash out squeezing our child’s hand
to rush beyond the sky’s domain
for shelter in our homeless land.
So, this sonnet was inspired by the second photo in this “week in pictures” link:
https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-61748380
Modern Abstract
An aerial perspective on a casualty of war,
A mechanized one, which, understandably,
No one will mourn, like Edgar Poe’s aristocrats
Who met the Red Death in their barricaded halls –
That scene recalled to mind as, with a chill,
One notes the Death’s Head in this photograph:
The glaring, vacant hatches which are empty
Eye sockets; the leering, broken grin
Formed by the blocks of gray reactive armor.
Like something out of Dia de los Muertos,
Only with the festive colors turning here to rust;
The grin decaying on the right to blackened gums –
This modern abstract on the theme of that
Which humankind continues to perpetuate.
Have Hope
Throughout the darkest hours,
There is still light to be found,
Even if you are alone and scared,
Trapped in this conflict.
I send not a poem of conflict,
But one of peace and tranquility,
Find the strength to see through this,
And share this strength with others.
Even in the midst of rubble,
A foundation can be seen,
Find your foundation,
And you will find hope.