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Ukraine (Remove filter)

I saw

I saw 

The flare of the gun

Against the setting sun

 

My baby's smiling face

I kept within a lonely space

 

My wife's hand in mine

For one final time 

 

I saw

The blood from my chest

Sending my body to rest

 

The future I thought would be

Drift away to a blood red sea

 

The hands of Time slowly cease

Feeling a weary inner peace

 

I saw

...

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UkraineGaza

Two Years On - Poems on the War in Ukraine

As you may have seen on the News and Features page, I have compiled a selection of fifty poems to mark the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Some of these poems will be familiar to regular contributors, but a number have not yet featured on the WOL blog.

This is a private print and not available for general sale, but I would be pleased to send a free PDF copy by e-mail to anyb...

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UkraineWarwriteoutloud

Two Years On

Time, or what passes for time,

Is a culprit, most unkind,

Stealing what we find,

Emptying our mind.

 

Time should be the music

Which everybody plays,

Adding to our days

In unexpected ways.

 

But time is made of windows,

Shattered one by one in hate,

A commentary upon this state,

Where rescue parties come too late.

 

Time is the gun, time is the shell,

...

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Ukraine

Time Passes

‘Time passes,’ said the man at our table.

‘People want something new.’ I guess he’s right.

It's the prevailing theory round here.

‘The same old faces,’ opined another;

‘You know, Zelensky. Always wants money.’

And ‘here’ is anywhere, maybe everywhere.

Time passes. All of us know that feeling:

You turn a new page in a calendar

Or put away Christmas decorations.

At cricket...

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Ukrainetimewar

Bad News

A morning to freeze the spirits.

As they shiver in hollowed times,
Workers stamp and spit used breath.

At the corner I see two men:

Their eyes wet from today’s bad news.

‘You can always tell,’ says my guide;

'They both had sons where it happened.'

I try to do an interview:

Get short shrift. Understandably.

As we leave, one of them calls out:

‘Poetry is dead. Art is dead...

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Ukrainewar

The Closing Of The Red Sea

 

I saw the blood run down the walls

Within the children's tears

I heard the parliamentary halls

Resound with warring cheers

 

I felt the shock of bomb & gun 

Within gasps of anticipation 

I saw their prey run & run

From nation killing nation 

 

I drew my scythe & licked my lips

A hefty load to swallow 

I told the ferryman, he needed ships

For, they will b...

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UkrainePalestineIsrael

A Genesis?

 

The world keeps shouting 

whilst, the quiet

sit in despair, witnessing 

the mould & rot spread

Trying not to Inhale 

greedy spores that rot hope

Exhaling a desperate,  empty foreboding 

‘Times they are a-changin’’

Echoes from an old radio somewhere 

A white flag drifts past, stained red

We rub our eyes

But, there's fire in the sky

And death all around. 

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PalestineIsraelUkrainemankind

Queues

We queued at the supermarket;

I saw that everyone was dead.

And yet they were still standing.

Out of defiance? Contempt?

Perhaps just out of habit.

 

We queued at the bakery,

And in the rows of cakes

We saw the faces of the fallen:

Unmoved, at last at peace.

 

We queued at the bus stop.

A passer-by called out to us

And we called back,

But no one was alive

...

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UkraineWar

Musée des Beaux Arts (January 2024)

The war’s cold exclusion has stripped out love.

Two years on, I stroll among the Bruegels;

The pictures dazzle in their joyless way,

Reflecting life’s treadmill of chores, horrors,

Its accommodations and its intrigues,

Its little stratagems for making do,

Not forgetting massacres and revenge.

I’ve read about the gas used at the front

To flush out choking soldiers marked for...

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Ukraine

Tunnel

You can spot the signs:

They talk of ‘hard-earned cash’,

And ‘putting our people first.’

We know what’s coming next:

‘Yes, the invasion was wrong,

But do we really….?’

Or, ‘why can’t they get together

And sort the whole thing out?’

Fatuous bewilderment

Is hardly an excuse.

It is so damned easy to say:

‘We expected some light

At the end of the tunnel’

When you...

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Ukraine

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