The fractured walls of wickedness in war

Are on display each day at any time.

The morning tittle tattles rise and fall

And poets churn out verses in sweet rhyme,

But somewhere, here or not so far away,

A child is killed by missiles from above,

A mother grieves for her departed son

And husbands weep for what they think was love,

While no one makes the evil men account

For...

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You don’t need much brains to share a tweet

(Tech Bros will help you if you can’t).

Just flash up vile messages on your screen

And give them a big MAGA slant.

Insult a battered country and its chief,

Say that his time is almost up,

And inform him that all future funding

Will be dropped in a paper cup.

Here’s what the tweet said, in more precise terms:

Ukraine’s...

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Never mind the wounded,

Never mind the dead;

Shake hands with the cheeky chap

And pat his shiny head.

Never mind the blood

That’s dripping from his hands;

Kneel right down and grovel

In front of where he stands.

The cheeky chap is on a roll;

The BRICs are dancing to his tune.

A warrant waits for his arrest,

But might as well be on the moon:

For t...

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At every corner of the world I turn,

I come across the stink and shape of death

And dodge the battered buildings to keep safe.

Yet still I hear the noisy men of war

Talk euphemistically of grades and gain,

Assuring us that all they want is peace.

Sad to relate, that treasured bird has flown;

From this time on, our God is on his own.

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In the language of communiqués, we say:

‘We will do whatever it takes’,

But in Kyiv, Kharkiv or Kramatorsk,

As nighttime falls and warheads once again

Wend their way between wide-open cracks,

The heart of one more mother breaks.

And our reply? ‘Look at the big picture;

This sort of thing is anecdotal.

A tiny fraction of the total.’

Pah!

From inside each plus...

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What are we fighting for?

Ukraine will win this war.

By gambit or caprice,

Ukraine will live in peace.

Though enemies have tried

To dent a nation’s pride,

Their onslaught is defied.

Ukraine will win this war.

Though cities crash and burn,

The displaced will return,

And conflict will adjourn.

Ukraine will live in peace.

For freedom will prevail

...

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Maybe my enemy enjoys a joke,

When seated round a table with his mates.

I can believe that he’s a decent bloke,

Except when the demand of war dictates.

Perhaps he likes his football at weekends;

His mother might still bring his cup of tea.

Yet now it’s captured land that he defends,

And if he’s ordered he will shoot at me.

Our paths may well have crossed when we w...

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I took one in the back,

And fell down on the ground.

I sought a friendly face,

And saw one that I knew,

Approaching me at pace:

A pal from student days,

Now on the other side.

‘I’m not to blame,’ he says,

And shoots, in the same place.

‘It’s business, it’s not you.’

His words seemed quite profound,

(I don't think I replied)

Yet they took me aback,

As I lay th...

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We feel bad about our provocation;

We didn’t mean to cause you such upset.

Of course, you are innocent and blameless;

Our troops were only sent in for a bet.

Our little strategic incursion

Was even-handed and sincerely meant.

There was no wish to violate your borders;

No malice was contained in our intent.

Wait a second, though! At provocation,

You’ve shown you...

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It’s never going to work;

You do deals with the tough,

But soon he’ll cut up rough

And do his dirty stuff.

He just can’t get enough.

He’s never satisfied

Until your flame has died,

Snuffed out by his dark side.

By then his grin’s as wide

As some cream-licking cat.

Though preaching peace and that,

His word is worthless tat;

He’ll rase your homeland...

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He waddled his way to the Kremlin

As some kind of honest broker,

But anyone watching the horror show

Viewed him as one sick joker.

With his huff-puff of lies and flannel,

He claimed that he came in peace;

If only Kyiv would listen,

The bloody destruction would cease.

Then just a few days later,

Ukraine suffered thirty-plus dead;

Idiots can sometimes be usefu...

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Some people say home’s where the heart is found;

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the being there,

The rooted opposite of somewhere else.

Fond memories may have tipped the scales

In favour of this slow, contented place:

The local shops, the chatter’s usual sound,

The morning stroll to coffee on the square,

The precious banality of passers-by,

Though each slab of this ecosphere wi...

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‘Look at the big picture,’

Cried the man in the suit.

So I took his advice

And ignored the sniper,

The stiff, the nightly raid,

The trivia of grief.

I turned to the summit,

Its polished chandeliers,

Its underarm hygiene,

Its on-tap refreshment,

(‘Still or sparkling, Madam?),

While, in the dregs of war,

The uninvited crouch

And hope the shells will miss.

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I remember the old dictum

About having to break some eggs,

But don’t recall the guided bombs,

Great cities beaten to a pulp,

Or blowing off somebody’s legs.

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A magnet hung in the big, bright store,

Between the household and the sport,

When down came a pair of guided bombs

And more innocent lives were cut short.

Far away across the border,

Pampered strategists play chess;

They do not know the victims,

And are bothered even less.

This is the new reality

Of war devoid of shame,

Where women, men and children

Becom...

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The naughty little boy:

He likes to roam around,

Invading foreign ground.

Harsh methods he’ll employ,

The naughty little boy:

He measures out the soil

That he intends to spoil

Or preferably destroy,

The naughty little boy:

A foe who stands alone

Is butchered by a drone:

His brand-new, shiny toy,

The naughty little boy:

No opposition views

Are broadcast on ...

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We have become defined by war.

Two years ago, we had the love.

Builders played and danced to our tune,

This fantasy world embraced us:

Plucky sorts, hung out for applause.

Now we are just part of the kitsch.

Since that time – more dead, injured and burned,

But not only that. Deeper marks

Have eaten into Free Ukraine:

The tears of a vanished childhood,

The shame of shr...

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There’s the old smoothie, turning on the charm.

Hunched behind his desk, far away from harm.

He doesn’t seem to care or give a toss

About the lives that he condemns to loss.

There’s the old smoothie, targeting Ukraine.

Oblivious to death, amused by pain,

He knows the masses have nowhere to hide

And are fair game if they live on that side.

There’s the old smoothie,...

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Are we allowed to be afraid?

Is it compulsory to fight?

Many would choose to be elsewhere

When faced with a foe and its might.

Are we a traitor if we leave,

Or a patriot if we stay?

It is no shame to show contempt

For warfare, and to keep away.

And ‘pacifist’, that grubby word

That hardly dares to speak its name?

Why should we join the ranks of hate

Or pl...

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It’s clever how they’ve set this up:

A bowl of fruit,

A jar,

A china dog,

An iron bar (an iron bar?)

Behind – some crumpled remains,

The stench of rotting heaps

Of defenceless women and men.

Still, no one can see or smell this,

So that’s all right then.

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He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He won’t lift a finger or part with change.

He wants his America ‘great again’

And thinks that such places are foreign and strange.

He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He prefers to do favours for his mates:

Like jailbirds whose crimes are far from mundane,

And heads of authoritarian states.

He won’t give a penny to help U...

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Two years ago, we had no words,

Because words seemed superfluous.

Branded upon our consciousness,

All we needed was the image:

Each scorched mark would remind us

Of newly discovered horror.

But, in the end, the words returned;

Our memories demanded them.

A less reliable record,

Yet devastating for all that:

Shifting, changing, containing tears

As well as anger. Tha...

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They have made a mess of the house next door;

Mum, Dad, two kids and a cat are no more.

Can someone explain what they do this for?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

In years gone by, it was never like this;

We greeted, with a handshake or a kiss,

Our nearby friends. How has it gone amiss?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

It looks as thou...

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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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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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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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‘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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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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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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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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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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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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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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