The metal’s falling

From the sky, like rain.

A warped ambition

Terrifies Ukraine,

As someone, somewhere,

Swells up with disdain,

While his practised sneer

Dishes out the pain.

And the world knows well

That he won’t explain,

But that, sure as hell,

He’ll be back again.

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Not long ago, you’d be thought eccentric,

If you chose to buy a full electric,

But internal combustion’s had its day;

That’s what the men in the showrooms now say.

It cruises at speed, with no CO2,

For years after purchase it runs like new;

And plugging it in is no longer naff,

As you relax in the motorway caff.

Green credentials are part of its appeal;

You’re an eco-war...

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‘Savoury stuff. That’s the ticket,’

Said my friend in the canteen queue.

Naturally more circumspect,

I asked ‘Is that potato real?’

‘You’re joking,’ quipped Young Doris

(Old Doris was doing desserts),

And piled the slop up on my plate.

Those lunches hit you where it hurts.

Finding a table, we sat down,

With colleagues in old overalls,

Who talked of hangings and o...

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Twenty dead so far……..

I wonder if they get an extra mark

For killing kids or snuffing babies out?

On their twisted scale of staff incentives,

Perhaps their bonus swells at all such scalps;

Perhaps their backs are slapped at each week’s end.

They say that talks for peace are well on track,

But we see little sign of it round here.

We feel the foul, malignant breath of b...

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Jack’s fancy was a bungalow,

Nestled quietly near the woods;

A garden and a patio,

A place to store his worldly goods.

A haven close to nature’s heart,

Where he could ponder and could rest;

A spot for music and for art,

And all the things he liked the best.

But pleasure soon began to wane,

As viral traffic pounded past,

And noise from each approaching plane

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The odd small child has copped it,

A writer here, a pensioner,

And, just around the corner,

An engineer.

It’s the same old detritus of war;

Keep moving now,

There’s nothing to see,

Nothing to fear.

The single mum with stumps for legs

Has made somebody’s day,

Just like the school and hospital,

Each with rooves blown away.

More detritus, but life goes on...

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‘Your country needs you!’

Came the breathless whine,

As we put our names

On the dotted line.

Everyone went;

We all joined the queue.

No questions were asked.

None of us knew

About proper war;

We weren’t playing games:

Grenades in an ambush,

A tank crew in flames.

Although we were told

That problems were shared,

It soon became clear

That ...

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By day he played the markets;

At night he played the fool.

In youth he would play truant,

To get away from school.

In common with those round him,

In life he played a part:

A tragic, gilded aesthete

Who suffered for his art,

The tough, self-made financier,

Who played for all they’re worth

The hapless types endowed with

A silver spoon from birth,

...

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Fawn, Lick and Grovel’s advice has come in:

Turn the other cheek, take it on the chin.

It’s should be simple to sit there and grin,

While he spills all his gibberish and bile

(In other circumstances, you might smile).

You have to be his stooge and feel his smack,

And grit your teeth as you’re stabbed in the back.

A handshake with the king, or fulsome praise,

May push humili...

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While standing on my hands,

Or balanced on my head,

I’m looking at the world from upside down.

I’m cartwheeling at play,

In my inverted way;

A raving king addicted to his crown.

I’m hanging from the ceiling –

A strangely bracing feeling –

Suspended in the void just like a bat.

Revolving through one-eighty –

My bottom end quite weighty –

My view of Ea...

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Civilians lie, annoyingly dead,

Innocent prey of the enemy’s sport,

While wannabe gods in Washington cry:

‘You losers! We told you. It's all your fault.’

Others in Ukraine, spared till now, await

A shabby, hardly necessary fate,

And wriggle in the web where they are caught.

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A cemetery, you may think, but

No bodies lie beneath, just roots;

No unattested arms remain,

No pairs of sweaty, unclaimed boots.

Quite soon there will be vines and grapes,

And then the succulence of wine;

No trace of blown-off body parts,

Detached by shell shot or by mine.

The volunteers who tend the place

Sense no souls planted underground;

They prune and ...

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There are no allies any more,

No friends, no foes,

No right, no wrong,

No good, no bad;

Just bully boys who'll take you

For everything you had.

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A soothing spectacle on screen:

A desertscape in lapsing time,

Where scenery - cactus, rocks, sand -

Never changes. The clocks tick on.

Though days flash by, time seems to freeze;

Sunrise repeats like gunfire.

Life seems eternal, unchanging,

The only obstacle being

Our usual human wear and tear.

Beyond, stormy seas of nonsense

Batter the crippled innocence

Of ...

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They no longer carry coins.

They have wads of notes to spare,

But their instinct is to throw crumbs,

Or bits of half-eaten sandwiches.

They tell you to perform

One of those cute local dances,

Or to sing ‘Streets of London’,

Or playing a tune on the violin.

Or better still, sit up and beg,

Say how goddam grateful you are,

And hand over anything you’ve got,

Explainin...

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Sitting on the train,

Neat houses flash by.

But life is not neat,

Though houses may be.

Behind those neat walls

Lurk furious hearts,

Unleashed as soon as

The train disappears.

These airtight dramas

Lie far from our minds.

We keep our heads down.

Our neat lives go on.

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The Sunshine Boys are chatting on the phone;

They claim that they are both concerned with peace.

But one of them is raining down his bombs,

While body counts on both sides still increase.

The other one appears not to remember

Who started this barbaric slice of hell;

He treats the culprit as a valued partner

And seems to have been captured by his spell.

The victims...

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A tingling, a taste of the past.

Before it started. Before time.

Such memories would have been nice.

Though winter packed a punch that year,

Us two, wrapped up in desire,

Barely remarked the snow and ice.

For we, young and unbreakable,

Took slippery falls in our stride

And bought up love at any price.

Until the day they came.

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A time will come when we forgive,

Though that time is not yet;

But even when forgiveness comes,

None of us will forget.

We won’t forget the agony,

The sadness and the waste;

We won’t forget the insults hurled

With puerile lack of taste.

We won’t forget our cities wrecked,

Our soldiers blown to bits;

We won’t forget the fearful nights,

The lethal missile h...

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Let bulldozers rip,

Get spades in the ground,

Turn on the taps

In city and town.

Rules on the bonfire,

Planes in the air,

Bricked-up banality,

The fun of the fair.

And, all of a sudden,

The climate’s nowhere.

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Now that the weeks and days and months fly by,

Propelling us still faster to our end,

The needed action is to hold up time,

To slacken off, or better still, suspend

Its uncouth march into the wild beyond

And celebrate its capture as its bond.

But if time should comply, what must we do?

Display ourselves and prance around a pole,

Or willingly obey a quiet void?

Time,...

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Simon Grimes

Sought warmer climes

To cover up

Outrageous crimes.

Meanwhile, the wondrous wunderkind

Cooked a rabbit that he had skinned,

And then used daring to escape

By running flat out like the wind.

As the bise chilled the strollers by the lake,

A cheating couple rose up from their bed,

And pushed their way through carnivals of crowds

Towards the snow...

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The march of time has done for one good man;

America has opted for a fool,

But once they suffer four years at his school,

They’ll spit out their disgust, because they can.

Societies will dabble with the dark

Until the day the scales fall from their eyes,

When, faced with routine bigotry and lies,

They understand this is no campaign lark.

Then honesty and decency p...

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It’s been the hottest ever year;

The one point five is broken.

But in society round here,

These words are never spoken.

There’s still time for a reset,

Through measures tough or token;

The greenhouse levels climb, and yet,

These words are never spoken.

The glaciers will melt away,

And fires taunt the ocean,

But in the workplace or at play,

These words are...

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On winter days, with frosted breath,

We wander to the warm, great hall

To see this sacred scene once more.

A mother mourns her perished son,

As mothers do across the world,

While washed-up men, most often old,

Pick off the innocent for sport.

Grouped women, tethered in their grief,

Mop up the personal effects,

Doused in their humid, sodden tears.

Soon, beyond anger, b...

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The kiddie-giggling boy-men types,

Who shape our tastes and fuel our gripes,

Are like a zebra with no stripes.

Their views today are painted on;

Those of the past are long, long gone.

They rule the culture like machines,

And serve up, bite-sized, on our screens,

An option menu for our dreams.

The bad ones will be swept away;

Nice shall prevail day after day.

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There but for the grace of God, I thought,

As he rose from his place on the pavement

And stumbled to the shelter for some soup.

Fifty, probably, but looked ten years more.

Unshaven, stinks, frankly, but still too proud

To ask for a bath. How did he get here?

Not long ago, he had a job, a spouse;

Then both disappeared and his home with them.

‘Bloody fool,’ he mumbled, ‘no di...

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In sleep I see the nail

Pass through the yielding flesh;

Jesus knew about that.

But we are skin and bone,

Already. No reserves

Of fat or of muscle.

Bare bones. No resistance.

Every strike and rumble

A nail, hammered, pinpoint,

Into the joints and cracks.

The torment forcing us

Towards strange submission.

Soon we could be up there,

On the cross, con...

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The moon shines up above:

New, crescent, half, gibbous, full,

Waxing, waning,

Dodging behind a scudding cloud.

Its complete repertory,

Its whole thing.

At least they’ll never get the moon.

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‘Put a brick in the edifice,’

Said the man climbing up the wall.

‘It will reach so high,

It will touch the sky,

Till the day it begins to fall.’

‘But what’s the point?’ I enquired,

‘If it ends up being destroyed?’

‘From out of the rubble

We’ll build back the double,

To make sure that we stay employed.’

‘That strikes me as strange,’ I replied.

‘Because it ...

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The putty on the antique frame

Is crumbling in my dreams;

The richly patterned tablecloth

Comes free at all its seams.

The neatly-tended flowerbed

Turns wild and overgrown;

Once-pristine grassy spreads of lawn

Are patchy and unmown.

The wondrous spectrum of our world,

Its subtle, shifting slants,

Gives way to cheapskate slogans

And simple-minded chan...

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This used to be my street,

This used to be my home,

This used to be my land.

I do not understand

And cannot fathom why

Things got so out of hand,

So much has been destroyed,

So many had to die.

These simple-minded times

Have carved the perfect tool

To camouflage the truth

And take us for a fool.

It turns out that this war

Is no one’s fault at all.

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The life blood of the being of our world

Is thinking, creativity and art;

These bourgeon through our minds and through our veins

And make us feel uplifted in our heart.

Their practice may produce art few will like,

And writings with which many won’t agree,

But comfort’s not the point of inspiration,

At least not when society is free.

But those in power, of whateve...

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Tears

Trickled

        Down her cheeks

        At the sight of

               The empty stocking,

               The house, unvisited.

                      While, next door, Father Christmas

                      Looked at his watch, zipped up his bag

                     And roared home for breakfast in his Jag.

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It’s quite the fashion now to bash

Those journalists who seek the truth;

As years flow by, more are cut down,

Or languish, silenced, in their youth.

As humans they are fallible

And are rebuked for their mistakes,

But hard men seek to shut them up

When they play for the highest stakes,

And can’t afford to be faced with

Exposure through detailed research,

To ...

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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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I’ll show to him the courtesy

He never showed to me;

I’ll meet him at the White House

With no conspiracy.

I’ll help with the transition

In ways he never did,

And will not throw my toys about

Like some spoiled teenage kid.

And won’t pretend we won the vote

Or claim to have been cheated

And will not start a riot

Because I was defeated.

I’ll shake hi...

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With their grunting and their oinking,

They parade around the pen.

For all their affectations,

They’re the angriest of men.

Their litany of grievances

Spawns shrill dishonest whine;

We’re living in the conman’s age,

This is the time of swine.

They soil your information

To camouflage their faults;

All traces of wrongdoing

Are locked deep down in vaults.

They...

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Let’s ease up on the green crap,

The climate’s not too bad;

Some summer heat in winter

Should make us feel quite glad.

Ditch all the regulations

That pessimists adore;

Give people what they dream of:

More flights, more stuff, more, more.

Rev up your petrol guzzlers

And roar down country roads;

Let’s motorise the planet

Through trucks with monster loads.

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They call them the disruptors,

Trump and Musk and Co.

But what do they disrupt?

Not themselves, oh no!

Not their balance in the bank,

Or property portfolio.

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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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He does not wear life

As life should be worn,

And seems not to think

That we should be kind,

That people need hope,

And not resentment,

That honesty wins

Over packs of lies.

If he gets the nod,

We are all losers.

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The trees begin to wilt and fade;

Another year is on the fall.

Though autumn can defy the odds,

The winter’s cold is bound to call.

The daytime’s relegated role

Is limited to minor parts;

Discarded leaves drift down to earth

In patterns of the purest arts.

In nights replete with cloudless chill,

We shiver at the crisp-cut moon;

The powdered snow beneath our ...

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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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You may have the misfortune to

Live upstairs from or right next door

To somebody they want to kill.

It’s not your choice; you have no voice

In whose blood they would like to spill.

And, being close, it could be you,

Who sees the bomb fall through their floor.

No one's fault. The luck of the draw.

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They munch at scraps of bread

And gulp their meagre drink;

They borrow someone’s phone

To make one final call,

Then scrape up what he asks

To squeeze into the boat

And shiver as the sea

Sets out its fearsome stall.

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We don’t have much time; sooner or later

This planet of ours will hit the buffers.

By then weak excuses or fake facts won’t work,

Nor saying: ‘well, it’s always been like this.’

Hot air is no defence against the heat;

The war, unfought, starts to flex its muscles.

It seemed so different the last time round,

As smiling faces sauntered on the bridge,

Seeking the usual gl...

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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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