~ while attending the "Voices for Ukraine" virtual reading organized by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach and Olga Livshin, 01 March 2022 Any country is an easy target Stop who goes there The shovel is making a hole in the gravedigger Now is a time of hybrid war The tail is wagging the dog Lord have mercy on us And on earth more war Be not troubled, soldier, nightingales Slender of neck, slight of throat You who have robbed us blind One hit and no more void to fill The ship of the universe A ship with hundreds of thousands of cannons on board The graves will open right up And the tanks rumbled as armored tractors down the road In a glorious and frightening time Each one shall be a hero The farther into battle the fewer heroes left behind Cinders rise with the earth Darkness invisible As ice turns to water Evil is not a big lie It's small shards resembling truth Evil can't lead, it lures Burn down to the ground and rise up as smoke Once on a train without warning I remembered it all The blue sea My friend's fishing boat My friends are held hostage and I can't reach them There is no poetry about war Just decomposition Sunflowers dip their heads in the field I have gotten so very old It's a time to sing songs Always a good time for defense Our heads are dusted with the ash of the first snow To hold a needle of silence in your mouth To whimper while drowning To hold the water of a language on your tongue To mend things that are still useful In these parts it's considered unnatural if war doesn't course through the pipes In the square across the way kids play at war She danced since evenings were still warm She danced because she wanted to turn back It's better to remember with the body A wrist where all the blood had gathered Another convoy was right behind us Perfectly round with a hole in the middle Which war zone? No one has heard of here Used to making a meal out of nothing So it goes Bargaining with hope Let me live at least through mid-day So white this explosion, she says So quiet We got surrounded I was walking with a spare pair of underwear in my pocket I don't believe it They called our killers police Russian warship go fuck yourself You choose when to shift gears
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.