Tag: Ukraine

A voice in the Wilderness of War

One tiny bird, atop the blasted tree,

fluffed its downy golden breast,

opened its shining beak and sang 

a new song, from

its heart, over the dying.

—-

Oppression, violence, vice, violation

of my land, killed chirruping chicks,

blasted my family while I flew afar.

These are my lyrics,

breaking me as they died.

——

They came in filthy smoking tanks,

despoiling, destroying, draining

the joy that lived here and cherished

every gift from God,

now ground from life to death.

——

I sing over the bodies of children,

their future ripped from their hands

by cowardly men dressed as heroes.

Their souls gone, can never be replaced

their hearts gone for aye.

—–

Fluttering down to the ruined earth,

he saw that hope had been annihilated,

each ruinous act of hate deactivated

the spark of life

generated in love.

—–

Still he opened his throstle, and chanted

his prayer, that despair will die and each

root of hopefulness will bring grace

and the shattered land

shelter life again. 

War on Refugees

Huddling close for warmth they gripped each other’s hands,

the ragged clothes hardly covering their shrunken flesh,

their sore covered faces closed eyes that had lost their light,

no one would come but those displaced, empty handed,

starving families, children like theirs dying slowly into

the corrupt earth.

—–

Governments rage against refugees, refusing to grant

them a chance to be free and a shaft of hope of life.

They go to their worship where they hear of a God

who cares about humans and the ravaged planet,

and turn blind backs on the horror of displacement

and dine richly.

—-

Charities working give them hope in clothes and food,

but no-one can help them while terrible traffickers 

take their coins for frightening travel, cons and lies,

promising heaven and giving them hell, while those 

who could stand for justice and mercy choose hatred

punish the innocent.

—

Now politicians think up wicked schemes and plot

to send them to countries violating human rights,

spending our money to perpetrate crimes against

humanity, binding them in chains and sending them

away to suffer more, be killed and so Pilate Patel

washes her hands.

Prayer on the Front Line.

I pray for Ukraine,

that each blade of grass,

flowers, bees and beetles,

birds and butterflies .

—-

I pray for their protection

against the avalanche

of violence and vile

destruction.

—–

I pray for each small child,

girl or boy, their school,

hospital, park and their

climbing tree.

——-

I pray for their safety,

in the minds, bodies,

and, cast away from families,

to be safe from harm.

——

I pray for the mothers, who

wait by the phone,

fathers, changing a job

for tanks, missiles and a gun.

——-

I pray for their hearts

that they don’t break,

that the abusive powers

relent – speaking words of peace.

—–

I pray for the medics, 

short of supplies,

for the vets who cannot

save bomb blasted pets.

—

I pray that they’ve

healing hands, their touch

to be as Christ, – in the absence 

of enough of everything.

—–

I pray for the governments,

choices they are making,

to save a people or

bury them in ash.

——

I pray for them to see with

a frightened child’s eyes,

to hear the cries with a

shattered mother’s heart.

——

I pray for the world powers,

to put aside their quarrels,

to open negotiations,

and work solely for peace.

——

Prayer is a voice in the wilderness,

a light in the darkness

and always on the front line

of any battle for any life.

The Flames of Death

It was beautiful, the newly shooting buds of ancient trees,

those toppled by the terrible storms defiantly greening,

At our feet the carpet of pungent garlic holding its buds

as precious gifts to a foraging folk and here and there

stars of anemones shining in the dim lit ancient path.

==

We trod on round the scars of fallen rocks, glimpsing

blue sky and rolling waves as they washed the shore, 

relentlessly cleaning the rocks and sand, filling small

coves with tiny shrimps, and cockle shells for the

sustenance of the crying gulls and scuttling crabs.

========

We rounded the corner and felt the cold wind of

death. All around blackened, tortured branches

crumbled into the blackened earth where the tiny

bodies of creatures lay cremated by human hands,

who’ve abused and raped this gentle, gracious land.

—–

Broken by the sight, smell and disgust for our race,

teary eyes took in the acres of what should be golden

tipped gorse, bluebells coming, and a place where

bees would buzz and butterflies dance. But their 

hiddenness in this brutal affair cost them their lives.

——

The stench remained with us as we finally passed 

into green and gentle slopes laying atop the cliffs,

called us to pray for Ukraine and others. There, a

beautious land has been stripped and burned. Both

their fruitful futures killed by callousness and greed.

——

The smoke still hung in the air as we silently pass,

the grim reminder of the disregard for living things.

The blackened soil lives in in our dreams, haunting

our thoughts recalling us to reality that some care

not for creatures, nor climate change carbon stoked

by

their 

fires.

Ukraine and Evil

She stepped over the grim reminder that somewhere, someone wants her dead,

harried, frightened, threatened, fastened to her people by a thread of vile, red

evil that looks to reject what was not perfect – but was the way they lived, and

gave of their best for their nation and now they ration their food and water.

—-

He took their peace, he took his lying ease, saying that their race would cease,

for no reason,  only the season was right for his arrogant, derogatory rant.

They suffer his noise, their boys, from uni, in front lines with guns to try and

drive the poisonous actions of a deranged faction, a reaction of the paranoid.

—

No-one can ever win at war, there are only losers but evil succeeds in its

purpose to subvert, deny, destroy young lives, creating deserts in land and heart.

She hides behind the broken wall, hears the call of carrion crows and weeps,

her heart is broken and still his heart is cold, calculating and cruelty escalates.

War on Pregnant Women

It was the pregnant woman cradling her hope

that shook me, a brave baby born to turmoil, 

no real future, freedom of speech and the liberty

to choose a path where hissing missiles and 

guzzling guns will not overwhelm the fragile

life that sparks behind closed contented eyes.

–

A year ago a couple’s loving embraces creates

a foetus, cells growing and separating in her

wonderful womb – in a time of political peace

and their precious neighbours were not vilified

by Putin’s army of trolls, and a settled peoples 

—

scared for their very lives as weapons wrench

the ridged roofs from their heads and harry the

poor and cancer sick lying in their winter beds.

They’re now starving, shivering, staying stalwart

in the face of agonising choices and harm,

weary women again running to find safety and 

a moment of grace for their horrified children.

—-

The human love that receives us at birth has

been warped and twisted, re-modelled until

it is a hatred, which like a volcano spills its

boiling lava over a verdant land burning,

steaming death in its severing of the living

in a holocaust of terror and no one ever

wins

in

war

and

as the mother

and her

baby

dies.

My Country’s Shame

The shame falls on me like showers of hail,

it drums on my burdened head. And I want

it to help me shed my skin and bury me but-

Would I be a whitened sepulchre? Faceless

with my nation’s baseless and graceless way

of torturing small children by turning them

back, rejecting their cries because we are

unwilling to open our arms and welcome

their haunted hurts and necessary needs.

——-

Still, she sits on her petty, priti throne

dishing out her orders that embarrass us,

to keep her figures tidy,  while in Europe

the sprawling camps of hungry evacuees

are greeted, warmed, fed by Europeans

not us. The guilt she should be feeling is

pushed into piles of likewise, party papers,

`and the British standard pretends to change 

but the shameful truth will ever distress me.

The Murder of the Innocents.

Its shocking, the shifting sands of conflict;

as brutalised bodies are buried in shallow 

graves while the wolves of war bare their

teeth and and snap and snarl mercilessly.

—

It is like a cloud of insanity descends and

sense and rationale are sold as ransoms

for seeding the ground with blood. We

watch as if watching a murderous movies.

—-

Do we feel the loss, can we bear to weep,

and wail, for the gross injustice of this 

assault on the human rights of children

murdered by icy cold hearted leaders?

—

The child’s eyes are closed

                and her heart stops beating.

War showing again its yellowed 

face of cowardice and words

bandied around are lies and 

propaganda because they 

cannot 

face the truth 

that it is 

Murder of

the Innocents.

War in Winter

Grief digs deeper when the winter months mutter war,

the loss of place, of purposeful peace and the gross

destruction of homes, humans and even habitats of tiny 

beings that have sought warmth under the frozen crust.

——-

It’s a bloody burden that they carry on breaking backs,

as they see bursting bombs of greed and intolerance

smashing into smithereens years of toil and travail,

silencing the calls of battered birds and coy children.

——

We watch and groan and tearfully pray for mitigation,

to live again and not counting the cost of glorified guns,

weaponry unleashed on the fragile world already over

heated as war fuels harm to frail, failing ecosystems;

——-

as they struggle against rising seas, warming of water

and of land, creating a damaging tide that cannot be

turned. Wearily we watch our toothless, Russian aided,

corrupt leaders sanction in word but not in action.

——-

Avaricious armies advance taking away more acreage,

and Hitler hungry thinks to have all Europe in their

sights as they wave and wield weapons in the faces

of  the weak and wounded. A coward starts a war.

——-

To take words and hear them is a core act of courage,

The brave are willing to alter their minds if certain;

but the craven will resort to violence to cover their

own frailty and persist against sense and humanity.

——

They’re usually far from the battle lines and lie low,

guarded and victualled well. Too, I want to crawl

away into a niche from the news and the blaming 

game but we shall stay struggling at the margins.

——

Let us stand together and link our arms for peace,

to raise our voices, tweet and write and sign every

petition that a lonely suffering nation might know 

their traumatic terrors are not yours or mine but ours.