IN THE LATE MARCH DUSK

In the dark blue

of the valley floor,

ice statues

melted into

snowy hillocks.

On the ridge

the fallen day

burns

in black

trees.

22.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON A LATE WINTER DAY

The first walk

of the day,

the last walk

of the day

in the evening

dusk.

22.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE LATER FUJIWARAS

When you lose

political power,

all you are left with

are the mountain

ranges of poetry.

22.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

18:24

In the horizon,

the last purple

light

of the day.

22.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHY NOT UKRAINE?

If limited 'autonomy',

under a brutal occupier,

should be enough

for Western Sahara,

as the European Union

and the United States claim,

why is the 'West'

not proposing the same

for Ukraine?

21.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE POLITICIANS AND THE PRESS OF THE OCCIDENT

  How they rage against

invasion, occupation

and annexation

in Ukraine,

while eagerly championing

invasion, occupation

and annexation

in Western Sahara.

What are

we going to do

with these

hypocrites?

19.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ALWAYS REMEMBER

Never let a right-winger

do a human being's

job.

19.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE 'WESTERN' MIND

The 'Singling out Israel is antisemitism!'

-folks are now

'Boycott and sanction Russia!'

-people, without any reflection,

and still clutching

their earlier stance,

because 'It's a different thing!'

- to them...

19.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WALKING BACK FROM THE COUNTY CENTRE, LOOKING DOWN AT A VALLEY

The snows

melt into

the mist,

the black

wall

of the forest.

18.O3.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Poems

IVOR GURNEY

Even the mad

are not happy

in this world,

except

in melodies

and verses.

17.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON A DAY LIKE THIS

  On an another day,

a day like this of light

and snow,

and blue shadows,

yet a day

without grief

carved across

all thoughts,

I would be out

there, in the light,

and the glittering snow,

in the blue shadows;

but on a day like this,

marked by sorrows

and darker shadows,

I'm in the gloom inside.

17.O3.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Verse

JUSSI

 A sick,

old cat

bathing

in sunlight

among books

on the

raggedy

kitchen table.

16.O3.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Verse 

'JUST' A CAT, AND STILL...

1  

Worrying about an old cat,

sick for the tenth day now,

and then I see a social media friend

posting a photo of her husband's

old hat, like the one

I gave you,

with a feather in this one,

and a message

about calling

the funeral home.

2

Shaken,

I still can't accept

that the cat

sleeping in March sunlight

will be gone,

like we all will,

and I'm bargaining

with Fate

about all the things

I will do

if he lives

a bit longer.

14.O3.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Verse

GEOGRAPHY DECIDES WHICH LIVES ARE WORTH SAVING

 If we would have drawn

the border of Europe

west of Dniepr,

there would not be

this kind of fuss,

no alarm,

no sanctions,

just the usual

"deploring".

14.O3.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Verse

THE PANDEMIC NOW

Twenty million dead.

20 000 000 000.

And now they,

the politicians

and the pundits

and the journalists,

speak of

"adapting to the new normal" -

of

accepting

mass death,

endlessly,

because,

"the economy".

12.O3.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DUSK IN MID-MARCH

A long winter day

burning red

among the ashes

of shadows.

14.O3.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Poems

BUT YOU SHOULDN'T GIVE UP

 All hope

is false,

only despair

is real,

but that, too,

ends with life.

12.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A SUNNY AFTERNOON IN MID-MARCH

An afternoon of light,

of pale blue skies,

white snows from wood

to village across fields,

and in a month,

all the snows

will be the sound

of running brooks.

12.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BEYOND THIS HORIZON

 1

In the end, everything

ends

in a failure,

even the universe.

2

There are no victories,

only defeats

delayed.

There are no successes

that carry beyond death,

of mortal beings,

mortal civilizations,

mortal universes.

3

Those who celebrate

their achievements

by writing them on clay

and stone, and send

into space on radiowaves,

are writing on void

for minds made of dust.

12.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A MORNING IN JUNE

A rainy summer morning,

a pot of old coffee to wash

past the decaying teeth,

and some words to scatter

on the computer screen,

before the nightmare thoughts

weave into a rotting womb,

and the beloved dead,

with their presence, remind

why that is just.

13.06.2021-11.03.2022

BECAUSE ONE GENDER KNOWS BETTER

Outside Hollywood movies,

and stories written by men,

few woman have ever claimed

that when men say "No"

to their advances,

they really mean "Yes".

09.03.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poem #Poems

THE 'STALINIST' CULTURAL SCENE SCENE OF ~1970

All you needed to be famous

was to be a teenage pen pal

to a renowned fascist poet

writing cantos in Venice.

20.08.2020-09.03.2022

CARLOTTA CHABERT

How strange that

mere paint on a canvas

evokes in us lust towards flesh

that has been bones and dust

since the time of our faceless

great-great-grandparents;

yet, it's only Hayes' Venus

that evokes our desire,

Palagi's Diana brings

only dysfunction.

UKRAINE DOESN'T MATTER

If Burma doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If Chechnya doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If East Turkestan doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If Kashmir doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If Palestine doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If Tibet doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If West Papua doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If Western Sahara doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

If Yemen doesn't matter,

Ukraine doesn't matter.

07.-17.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TO THOSE BORN BEFORE ~1982

We should ask where

were all the people

now aghast of Ukraine,

those who rage against

the Russian tricoleur

flying above Kherson,

when the same flag flew

on invading tanks

in Georgia and Chechnya

and above the ruins

of blasted Grozny,

and they were dumb?

07.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DESIRE

 Desire

is a terrible master,

and even a worse servant,

for ever will it try to become

the master.

But what is a life

without desire, its fullfillment,

and the picking of bitter fruits

of all-consuming passion

from the ashes?

07.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE DEATH OF MAKILON TABUNI(12)

 If only Makilon Tabuni,

aged twelve,

would have been beaten to death

by Russian soldiers

in Ukraine...

Then his young life,

and his terrible death,

would have mattered -

but, alas,

he was beaten to death

by Indonesian soldiers

in West Papua,

where the war and occupation

has gone on for only 59 years,

instead of a week,

and only hundreds of thousands

have died at the hands of occupiers,

instead of a thousand.

06.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHEN JOURNALISTS, POLITICIANS AND PUNDITS EMBRACE BDS

"It's wrong to single Israel out"

- folks are now

"It's right to single Russia out"

- folks, ardent

supporters of boycott and sanctions,

but only against a single state...

06.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHAT THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE HAS CAUSED

Journalists,

who have spent decades

justifying the killing youths

for throwing Molotov cocktails

at occupation forces,

now write instructions

how to make Molotov cocktails

and show the most

vulnerable positions

on military vehicles

for them.

06.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IT WAS ALWAYS TOO LATE

Too late, always

too late,

from the first

moment

on this globe,

spinning away

into the great

darkness.

04.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE SHORELESS OCEAN

Adrift in time,

far from the shipwrecks

of our lives,

the graves

they left on

the long-lost shores,

still in our

leaking lifeboat,

in the darkening blue.

04.03.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AZES OF THE INDO-SCYTHIANS

An entire era was based

on the reign of Azes,

but what are we left with?

A few inscriptions,

coins that might come

from two kings;

read a learned scholar

and he says there

were two, a generation

or two apart -

and a second one says

that this is just an invention

to fill in historical gaps.

Thus the mighty

are reduced to metal

and educated guesses.

23.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE ALCHON HUNS

In them, the history of India

has its own, self-made

horde of Dick Tracy villains,

monastery burning,

city ravaging Aryans,

with deformed skulls

out of 'Ancient Aliens' nonsense,

and drooping mustaches,

envy of any pulp crime boss.

21.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EVEN AFTER ALL WE HAVE GONE THROUGH, AS A SPECIES

The tragedy

of human existence

is that we

believe in it;

like a counterfeiter

believing in his product

we still put forth these

pointless moments

as ones holding

deep, lasting value.

20.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

REACHING TOWARDS GODHEAD

 The divine, just

an attempt to imagine

humanity perfected.

What a failure.

20.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

UNDER THE SNOWS OF THIS YEAR

“Mais où sont les neiges d’anten?”

Francois Villon(1431-1463?)

Where are the snows of yesteryear,

you asked, so long ago -

but they are here,

covering the shivering land,

and where are you,

the twice condemned man?

Under the snows of yesteryear,

your skull full of frozen soil,

as shall we be,

under the snows of this year.

20.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GRIEF

Grief is

sharp, broken glass

covered in

the blood

of memories.

15.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE MONASTERY ELDER

Oh Feodor, see what you

do to us - make us side

with gray-chested Father Ferapont

and his chains,

over saintly aristocrats,

whose religion, born of duel,

was drinking tea and eating jam

with fine society ladies!

16.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOLY SCRIPTURE

God is in

the dead words,

the dead words

of dead people,

in their desperation

facing existence.

15.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE GIFT OF ANCIENT YEMEN

 The first sip

of fresh coffee,

in the dim light of

the morning,

drives away the

cold thoughts of the night,

the snowflakes

of desperation.

14.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

RELIGION IS REGRESSION TO INFANCY

When they have to

face the cosmos,

a god becomes to

human beings

a comforting thumb

to suck.

14.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SHIVERING

Feeble light,

falling snow

between overcast

sky, funeral earth,

on this gray midwinter

morning, mourning.

13.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AS THE BLACK HOLES EVAPORATE

Nothing lasts

forever

except

forever

13.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME

Those we grieve now

once grieved themselves;

an unbroken chain

of grief

uniting all generations

to both directions

from us.

12.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AWAKENING AT NIGHT

 The day wasted,

long hours slept

away, thrown

down into the abyss

of the void

which awaits

at the ending

of these mirthless

trips around the Sun.

09.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

SEE THE FANGS OF TOMORROW CLOSE IN II

The future in its

gaping maw holds

the frail today,

shivering with dread,

and doomed.

04.05.2013-23.10.2020-05.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

REMEMBER II

Remember, you are a mortal,

always one heart-beat away

from oblivion; as you began

a new text, write, then,

each sentence as if

it would be your last.

13.O2.2021-05.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

SISYPHUS IN WINTER

 The wind, howling,

drives snow

across the path

I made through

the snowbank

blocking the driveway.

04.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry 

BEGETTING THE DAY

The dawn shivering

unbinds the girdle

of the luscious night.

04.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry 

WINTER TWILIGHT

 The night descending

hides the fallen snow

lacking footprints.

04.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry 

STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE(1832-1916)

Wanting to avoid unduly interest

towards the collection he had edited,

he wrote a 60 page preface

to protect the poems

from the eyes of readers -

the poems he had made

by cutting Shelley's verse dramas

happily into pieces.

04.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry 

AS THE PALE DAYS GROW LONGER

The black hours of the night

sweeter than the pale hours

of the day, washed gray.

The day reveals, cruelly;

the night hides, comforts

with its impenetrable darkness.

02.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry 

OUT OF EDEN

Light from the globular cluster Messier 14

for thirty-thousand years traveled

to be captured by our telescopes,

and on some ancient planet there

they are capturing the spark of light

from Earth that was just out of Eden

and Cain washing from his hands

the blood of his Neanderthal, Denisovan,

Floresiensian brothers...

18.01.-02.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry 

HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS

The date is late,

the night is at hand

and beyond the dark hours

no waiting dawn.

In this darkness

without hope of stars

all that was life

shall dissolve.

02.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

ASTRONOMICAL LECTURE DURING THE PANDEMIC

 "Collision is inevitable...

but it's not on the list

of things we have to

worry right now",

says the astronomer

about Large Magellanic Cloud's

collision with the Milky Way;

about the same time as

Andromeda and

Milky Way

are engaged

in their long mating dance,

giving birth to supernovas,

and on the Earth

the last living things

huddle deep in the crust.

02.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry