2. Flowers for Putin
 
Let me offer flowers for Putin
He has not always lied
He has not always killed
His eyes were not always cold
His smile wasn't always a sneer
He was born of woman
His father was human
There must have been playmates
There must have been schools
There must have been teachers, lessons and rules.
 
But Hitler, not Tolstoy, looks out of his eyes
Stalin, not Trotsky, speaks in his ears
Goebbels, not Chekhov, comes out of his mouth
Lenin, not Pushkin, has hands round his heart.
 
So let me place flowers
Where the eyes are dry wells
The ears are just holes
The mouth is a cave
And the heart has been squeezed empty.

4. Putin Plays by Hitler’s Playbook

Think of the irony . . .
What Hitler tried in Russia, all in vain,
Putin did in Syria and is trying in Ukraine,
Using Hitler's playbook.

Does Putin not remember
The history, the irony,
The lessons of war,
The sieges of cities that would not surrender?
Leningrad, Stalingrad, Moscow . . . in Russia!
They couldn’t be circled, wouldn’t be strangled,
Though starved and depleted, dismayed and deprived,
Were stoutly defended and ably survived,
They destroyed Hitler’s army and took Hitler down,
His playbook in tatters, his empire gone.

 3. When Putin Took back Chechnya
 
When Putin took back Chechnya,
The world was quite okay.
No one wanted Chechnya
Anyway.
Sorry Chechnya!
 
When Putin rescued hostages
In Moscow and in Beslan,
It was brutal.
Five hundred died.
Their families cried.
Sorry families! Sorry hostages!
 
When Putin poisoned dissidents
Litvinenko and Skripal,
The British were appalled.
“He’s done this in our country!”
Sorry Britain! Sorry dissidents!
 
When Putin took Crimea,
The world did not complain.
The problem was Ukraine’s.
Sorry Crimea! Sorry Ukraine!
 
When Putin seized Donetsk,
And then Luhansk,
The world did not respond.
The problem was . . . . Ukraine’s.
Sorry once again!
 
When Putin sent troops to Syria,
Helping al-Assad,
No one minded much.
It wasn’t us.
Sorry wasn’t said.
 
When Putin bombed Ukraine
To make it part of Russia,
We didn't see this coming.
Did we? Did we?
Really sorry Ukraine!

5. Ode to Odesa

Your farmers and fishers, writers and builders,
For two thousand years, have shown who you are:
A biblical settlement on the Black Sea,
A colourful cloak of peoples and cultures,
Nomadic, Armenian, Slavic and Greek,
Invaded by Mongols, Tatars, Russians, and Turks.

Your city was found (not founded!) by Catherine the Great,
She famously called you the Gem of the Sea.
Designed by Richelieu, Italians and Greeks,
Your city’s museums, operas and gardens
Gave pleasure to Pushkin and delighted Mark Twain.

Ever at the centre, between east and west,
Not of Asia or Europe, but equally both.
And equally to Christians, Muslims and Jews
A jewel of refuge, a haven and home . . . .
But then came the pogroms and Jews had to flee.

Many years later Russian Bolsheviks came,
Captured your city and all of Ukraine,
Leading to decades of peace with unease . . . .
Till the Nazis came down like wolves on the flock,
Massacred thousands and enslaved thousands more
During three years of terror, resistance and war.

Thus is your story steeped deeply in tragedy,
And thus were you named a World Heritage Site,
And not just for tragedy, beauty and light.
Your forte was comedy, satire and farce,
Often led on the stage by “the Jew of Odesa”,
A Shakespearean fool (so no fool at all),
A sharp-witted character and Socratic dissenter,
Smart on the street, wise in the theatre,
A lovable loser who wins in the end.

​Odesa! Odesa! Odesa our friend!
Your past is confirmed but your future’s unsure,
Vlad the Invader has arrived at your door,
Malignant his mind, psychotic his state,
His eyes are on fire with madness and hate.

6. Vlady and Joseph: A Conversation
 
Where have you been, Vlady Putin
Where have you been?
Where have you been, charming Vlady?
 
I’ve been to Ukraine, Joseph Stalin,
I’ve been to Ukraine.
 
What did you there, Vlady darling?
What did you there?
What did you there, charming Vlady?
 
I destroyed several cities, Joseph Stalin,
I destroyed several cities.
 
Why did you that, Vlady darling,
Why did you that?
Why did you that, gentle Vlady?
 
Those cities were there, Joseph Stalin,
Those cities were there.
 
I love your style, Vlady darling,
I love your panache!
I love your elegance, your flair and your grace,
Charming Vlady!
You remind me of me, smiling Vlady.
​

 7. Me Tarzan, You Jane
 
Me Tarzan, you Jane,
Me Russia, you Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine, we are one,
Said Putin,
One nation beneath God’s sun.
Let no man on earth break asunder,
Let no woman either try to sever,
What God and history have joined together.
 
I am Russia as DeGaule was France,
As Franco was Spain, as Churchill was Britain,
 And as Castro was Cuba, said Vladimir Putin.
In peace and war, joy and strife,
I am Russia and Ukraine is wife.
 
Ukraine is mine, belongs to Russia,
I am Russia and no one else is.
Ukraine is mine and no one else’s.
I am madness, jealousy and rage.
Beware of me, Ukraine,
Me Tarzan, you Jane.

8. Mariupol

Mariupol, Mariupol,
What have you done
To merit destruction by the wrath
Of one man?
 
What have you done
To attract Russian missiles
By air, land and sea?
Were your people too free,
Too open, too happy
To be allowed just to be?
 
With Ukrainians and Russians
Living, working as one,
A city of industry, hope and prosperity,
The “City of Heroes”, a symbol of peace,
Mariupol, Mariupol,
Nothing wrong have you done.

9. Vladimir Putin: My Story, My Game

From my mother’s womb
I fell into the Kremlin,
A prodigy groomed
 By the KGB,
And sent to Germany,
As eyes on the skies
And ears to the ground,
Managing files
Handling spies.
I soon became known
As an angel of death,
An agent of doom.
 
I am born to two cultures:
My father a Soviet
Communist atheist,
My mother, an Orthodox
Russian Christian.
 A dubious mix,
To my advantage.
 
In time I turned Christian
And made my confession.
(Very sorry indeed
For all of my sins!)
I took holy communion,
And am wearing forever
The silver cross of my mother.
 
Does God exist?
As a former Marxist,
It’s not for me to say.
As a friend of Russia’s Jews,
It’s not for me to choose.
As a re-born Christian
I must be unassuming.
In any case, I always say
It matters not if I believe in God.
What matters is:
Does God believe in me?
And I believe he does.
 
Back in Moscow
I formed my own team
For political games:
KGB agents,
Oligarchs, athletes,
White collar criminals,
Svelte men in suits,
A handful of thugs,
And men of the Party.
We covered all bases.
Nobody asked
Who was in charge.
They already knew:
President Putin to you.
 
But these were not all.
I had my own groupies;
Hitler the brain-mole
Looked out of my eyes;[1]
Goebbels the liar
Spoke into my ears.
Lenin the leader
Was there in disguise,
Stalin the tyrant
Broke down in tears.
 
So I’ve conquered all Russia
And will re-conquer Ukraine.
I am Vlad the Invader,
A born-again Tsar,
Greater than Peter,
Lenin and Stalin.
More fearsome than
Vlad the Impaler by far.
I’m Vladimir Putin,
That is my name.
I’m Vladimir Putin,
World history’s my game.


[1] Leonard Cohen, “Hitler the Brain-Mole,” from Flowers for Hitler.

10. Bucha:  A Russian Tank Commmander’s Log

We had been part of the team
That had tried to take Kyiv,
Now were passing through Bucha
On our way to the east,
A column of tanks, like a battleship fleet,
A modern day cavalry,
Just passing through.
 
My four person tank crew
Had done little harm
As we wended our way through
The centre of town.
We had taken pot shots
At figures in windows,
And blown up some shops,
But in the scale of this war,
We had not done a lot.
 
My congenial crew
Were crammed in the tank's belly
 For an hour of sleep,
And I, their commander ,
Opened my log
 To record the day’s feats.
Then the dogs
Of war were unleashed.
 
We were the sixth tank
In a line of a dozen,
Suddenly caught in a cross-fire
By Ukrainian soldiers
Hidden in wood
At the edge of the road,
Armed with Javelins
Fired from shoulders.
 
They destroyed the lead tank
And blasted a couple
At the back of the line.
Unable to move forward
Or turn and go back,
Little room to maneuver,
We were sitting ducks
And had to attack.
 
We did so with fire,
Fear, fury and rage,
Continued the rampage
And destroyed the whole town,
Avenged fallen colleagues,
Without keeping score.
 
This is our mission,
This is how we wage war.
We left the streets littered
With hundreds of wounded
And hundreds of dead,
Ukrainians and Russians,
United in dying, united in death.
 
Remember us, Bucha,
We were just passing through.
 
 

11. A Short History of Urban Warfare
 
Prologue
 
In ancient times we recognized war
As the wrath of a god,
The revenge of a goddess,
The lust of men,
The sins of women,
The arrogance of kings,
Or the vengeance of queens.
 
In biblical times
The Almighty was jealous,
Allowing no gods to be placed
Before him. Cities which disobeyed
He wrathfully razed
With wind, fire, water and plague.
 
But nowadays
Wrath, greed, vengeance and pride
Are deemed human, not godly, failings.
No gods are raining
Fire from on high,
And no kings or queens
Have the power to slaughter.
Today it’s the greed of a Hitler,
Mussolini or Franco,
The payback of a Roosevelt,
Churchill or Truman,
Or the wrath of a Lenin,
Stalin or Putin
That orders, or sanctions,
A city’s destruction.
 
 
Ancient and Biblical Times
 
Unless you are deep into Virgil’s Aeneid
Does anyone grieve the destruction of Troy,
The murder of sleeping men, women and children
By proud Agamemnon and treacherous Greeks?
The answer is no.
 
Do we not celebrate musically
That Joshua fought the battle of Jericho,
Slaughtering all in that doomed city!
Is anyone saddened by these deaths long ago?
The answer to this is . . . probably no.
 
And who now cares that on Jordon’s plain
God the Almighty sacked Gomorrah and Sodom
With a fiery maelstrom (a raging fire-storm)
And turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt,
As she looked fondly . . . humanly . . . back
At her family’s burnt home?
Well, this is only a story from a long time ago.
 
And who minds that God himself cursed
The wicked city of Noah
(A comical man in song and in verse
In a fantastical story about building an ark).
God purged it of sin with a biblical flood,
Drowning its people in an ocean of mud.
Nobody minds.
 
Modern Times
 
And who now thinks of more recent destruction:
European cities besieged,
Scorched and plundered by enemy forces,
Like Rotterdam bombed and burned to the ground?
Or like the ghettoes of Warsaw and Prague
Smashed, flattened and ravaged?
 
And who remembers that in one night of terror
Dresden was hammered by allied bombers,
Swarm after swarm, igniting a maelstrom
 That sucked air from the lungs of all who were there?
The greatest one-night slaughter
 In the history of man.
Who remembers this now? Who even knew?
 
Everyone does know or remember
When the atom bomb loosed
“The force from which the sun
Draws its power”
Upon two abject cities
Of imperial Japan . . .
Selected by Truman
For utter destruction,
Destroyed, it was said,
To save lives in the end.
But Truman’s commentary
On the power of the sun
Was something like poetry,
And slightly too biblical
(It was after all just a big bomb),
So we’ve put it behind us,
Yet failed to move on.
 
Today: April 3, 2022
 
Today – this very day –  
It’s the wrath of Putin
And others like him
(Milosevic, say)
That initiates war.
But war zones are crime scenes
And we cannot move on,
Until the crimes are acknowledged
And justice is done.
 

12. General Dvornikov: Putin’s Man in Ukraine

Across the whole world are millions of butchers
Who take pride in their work,
Like all good tradesmen, artists, nurses or teachers.
Professionals in every sense of the word,
Meticulous, honest, decent and trained.
 
But General Dvornikov . . .  recently named
Commander of Russian troops in Ukraine,
And famously known as “the Butcher of Syria” . . .
Is neither a butcher nor a soldier at all.
His calling is killing. He’s a killer that’s all. ​

                                                  13. What We Know about Vladimir Putin

                                       Age:                      Grown old without grace
                                       Build:                    Like a middle-weight boxer, with short, stubby legs
                                        Neck:                    Short and fat, like a stump
                                        Head:                    The head sits glumly on the stump of a neck. 
                                        Face:                     Pale, hairless and wrinkled, like a very old baby
                                        Eyes:                     Sky blue and cold
                                        Ears:                      Flat to his head but listening always
                                        Mouth:                 Thin lipped with a smile you don’t want to see      
                                        Arms:                    Short, with small hands and short grasping fingers
                                        Reach:                  Exceeding his grasp
                                        Brain:                   Like a rotting cork in a bad bottle of wine.
                                                                      Don’t smell the cork. Don’t taste the wine. 

14. The Amazing Klitschkos
 
Who are the most famous brothers in history?
I might have said once it was the brothers
Abel and Cain, though it’s most likely
They never existed. Or rather
They were symbolical figures in a mythical tragedy,
A stark biblical warning against brotherly jealousy.
 
In the Bible as well are Moses and Aaron,
But one is a prophet chosen by God,
The other just a side-kick.
No equality there.
By contrast, the amazing Grimm brothers
Were soul-mates and partners
In all their endeavors.
The sweet, cruel folk tales they gathered,
Edited and published together
Bear witness to life-long adventures
Of joint search and discovery.
​
In the wild US west were brothers well known,
Jesse and Frank, ill-fortuned bank robbers,
But the younger one led, the older one followed.
Jesse was glamorous, his brother a side-kick.
Only Jesse amazed us – an outlaw and hero,
Shot in the back, while hanging a photo.
More recently still are the political Kennedys,
Admired, ill-fated, John, Robert and Teddy,
But each was unique and all died too soon.
 
Let’s now salute the most famous of brothers
Across the whole world, as respected as Moses,
As fierce as the Jameses, as grim as the Grimms
As revered as the Kennedys and cleaner by far:
The Amazing Klitschkos, equally stars,
Warriors of sport, idols of war,
Political icons and Ukrainian heroes,
World Champion boxers, Wlad and Vitali,
As equal in friendship as brothers can be,
Fought all contenders one after the other,
Went brother to brother only to spar,
Blood brothers in peace, blood brothers in war.
 
Vitali, the elder, is mayor of Kyiv, a sportsman
Turned soldier, his city’s defender,
He stands in his socks just six foot seven.
Wladimir, the younger, is his brother’s near twin,
One inch shorter, but equally smart, equally strong,
Equally capable of leading their people.
 Together they form a front of resistance,
Using their fame and their physical presence,
Twin peaks of resilience in their nation’s defense.

15. The Moskva
 
You were born in ‘eighty-two,
A steel-prowed warrior,
Armed and deadly,
The flag ship of your fleet,
Proudly knifing through
Narrow straits and outlets
To the open sea.
 
The Black Sea, the Azov and Baltic,
The Atlantic and Pacific
Were your play-grounds in youth,
Where you did no one harm,
And in turn you were
 Never challenged, never bullied,
Never run aground.
 
But as you entered old age,
The Black Sea became
Your battle-ground,
A fatal slip!
Putin’s hubris
And Ukraine’s missiles
Have brought you,
And most of your crew,
Down with you. 

Rust in peace
Old Russian ship!

​16. Easter Sunday in Eastern Europe

Easter Sunday in Eastern Europe
And Russian President Vladimir Putin,
An adult convert to the Eastern Orthodox faith,
Has made his confession and taken communion,
While the troops he commands
Continue their mission
For the utter destruction
Of Ukrainian cities and the Ukrainian nation.
 
Oh what did you say, Vladimir Putin,
What did you say when you listed your sins?
Do you believe that crimes against humans
Are not sins against God, so not worth confessing?
Or do you believe that God gives you license
For what’s done in a war?
 
And what did your priest say, Vladimir Putin,
Your father confessor?
Did he assign you some penance,
Perhaps ten Hail Mary’s and a slap on the wrist?
Or did he say what you wanted to hear,
That you’re a good boy, Vladimir,
And a great Russian hero, if not a saint?
You’re not going to hell but straight up to heaven,
Vladimir Satan!
​

​​17. Carthago Delenda Est

Russia’s invasion of independent Ukraine
Has historical precedents we should examine again.
Vladimir Putin’s self-righteous ego
May remind us of pompous Senator Cato,
Whose madness led Rome to annihilate
Carthage, North Africa’s great city-state.
 
Nearly two and one-half thousand years ago
Rome was the wealthiest, most powerful empire
In the world (as Rome knew it). From Rome’s perspective
No other world mattered, or even existed.
 
On the Africa side of the Mediterranean Sea,
Stood Carthage, Rome’s trading partner and rival,
Defeated by Rome in the first two Punic Wars.
From Rome’s point of view these land and sea battles
Were World War One and World War Two.
And Carthage was no longer a rival at all.
In Rome’s proud perspective its own empire was all.
 
But everything changed when Cato the Elder,
Proud Roman senator and famous debater,
Visited Carthage on a diplomat’s mission.
He was amazed, overwhelmed, deeply impressed
To witness the wealth, beauty and splendor
Of this African city of a half million residents,
Which he jealously feared might soon out-rival Rome.
Carthage had forty-foot walls, towers and battlements,
Broad avenues, a huge public square, two large ports,
Gleaming temples, public baths and modern law courts . . .
All of which made old Cato mad and malevolent.
 
When Cato went home and spoke to Rome’s senate
His first speech was filled with malice and hate,
Urging the utter destruction of the Carthaginian state.
Speaking in Latin he said these cruel words,
“Carthago delenda est!” (Carthage must be destroyed!)
And used wicked language like that
At the close of every speech afterwards.
 
What’s also amazing is this: both Rome and Carthage
Followed a strict rule of law in all civic matters,
Their citizens were cultured and knew their own rights.
But in matters of war, they were totally savage.
They would torture or kill men, women and children
Without any qualms, raping, enslaving any they captured.
Ethnic cleansing was just one tool in the tool-kit,
Massacres were part of the victory party.
Destroying whole towns, erasing a nation,
These weren’t crimes, they were methods of war.
War had no protocols. War was outside the law.
 
So when Rome went to war against Carthage again
It was with the intent of total destruction.
Rome sent hundreds of ships, thousands of men,
Surrounded and strangled the whole city of Carthage,
Breached all the walls and burnt down the city,
Slaughtering almost all in a scene of great carnage,
And the few who survived were sold into slavery.
End of the story, old Carthage was history.
 
More than two thousand years later world bodies agreed
A set of rules and protocols governing warfare,
International aggression, extra-legal executions,
And the targeted killing of innocent civilians,
The intentional bombing of homes, hospitals and schools,
And the unspeakable crime of genocide.
Tribunals were founded to deal with offenders.
Courts were established and cases were tried.

18. Vladimir Putin Confesses His Sins: A One-Scene Play

Vladimir Putin visits Russian Archbishop Kirill, his father-confessor over many years since his conversion
from atheism to the Russian Orthodox faith. He admits many sins, but he’s neither humble nor sorry. 

​
Putin:    Father, old Father, hear me and bless,
               I’m here to confess.

Priest:   My son,
               I can give penance, if you lay out your sins
               And truly repent. But only God can forgive.
 
Putin:     Father,
                I don’t intend to repent in so many words.
                I’ve done what I’ve done and don’t need forgiveness.
                I’ll lay out my sins, for you to examine.
                But I’m a little conflicted
                About what’s just a crime among men
                And what is a sin against God.
                Perhaps you can advise.
                I have made a short list.
 
Priest:    Vlad, you put me through hell.
                Why do you need me to explore
                Your sins against God,
                Your crimes among men,
                Your whimsy, your war,
                The bombings, the deaths, the pain
                You’ve imposed on the state of Ukraine?
                I don’t want your list. I well
                Ought to give you a ticket to hell.
 
Putin:    My father, my priest, my confessor in youth,
                I neither seek heaven nor do I fear hell.
                I’m alone in the world with only my truth.
                I can’t talk to generals, won’t talk to staff,
                Can’t look in the mirror and speak to myself.
                I am sorry for nothing, that is a fact,
                I’ll continue the war and won’t roll it back . . .
                I just want to talk. I need you to know me.
               
Priest:    Vlad, I already know you,
                Have known you forever.
                The war could be over, a treaty agreed.
                But what you want from me is not clear.
 
Putin:    I want you to know I am a great sinner:
              I’m Hitler, I’m Stalin, I’m Grigor Rasputin,
              And surely more evil than all put together,
              But that, blessed father, is my historical mission.
              It’s part of my calling as an un-Orthodox Christian,
              Of which I am proud, but then pride is a sin,
              The greatest of all. So you see my confusion.
 
Priest:   Do you believe for a moment
               God needs you still in the Kremlin?
               You seem to believe you’re an agent of God.
 
Putin:     Not an agent of God, I’m an angel of death,
               Like a demon from hell, but hell doesn’t exist,
               Neither does heaven, and God himself is a myth.
               I’m a historical weapon to forge a new empire,
               Mother Russia’s my mother,
               And the steppes are my father.
              When I win the war, I’ll be the war’s author,
               And here’s what I will write . . . .
               I fought evil with evil, hate with hate,
               Sickness with death, and fire with fire.
               I'm a historical force with a mystical fate.
 
Priest:   My son, you talk like a madman,
              A person demented, a veritable demon.
              But, Vlad, I came for your sins,
              So just tell me of those.
              I‘ll stand here beside you, wherever this goes.
 
Putin:    Father, my father,
              My sins are legion, but I’ve made a short list:
              You know they are deadly, the deadliest seven.
              But perhaps I’ll name five, five of the seven!
              Five is not bad. I’ve had a long life.
              Pride, as in pride of self and of country,
              Greed, anger, envy and lust. As for the rest –
              Gluttony and laziness – they don’t really apply.
               I am KGB trained and forged in the Kremlin.
               I am as cold as steel, and crueler than Stalin.
               If the anti-Christ were real, not just a myth,
               That would be me, the Sword of the Apocalypse.

​

19. Vladimir’s Blanket

It was a thick green blanket, a warm and wooly coverlet,
That the President of Russia held upon his knees,
As his nation celebrated old victories
In Eastern Europe and over Germany,
And more recent ones in Syria and in Chechnya.
It was as warm and wooly as the baby blanket
Vlad’s mother wrapped around his tiny body
On winter nights in Leningrad when the windows leaked
Around the edges, and the panes grew frost in layers.
 
He had not asked for the blanket on this spring day
Marking Russia’s victory in World War Two,
But his minders in the Kremlin knew
What the generals didn’t know or feared to say,
That Vladimir had grown prematurely pale and old,
And had become a phantom of his former self, cold
In body, cold in mind, cold in feelings, cold in tactics.
His face, composed by artful surgeons, cosmetic,
Placid, pudgy, wrinkleless, expressionless, serene,
His head hunched down into his shoulders,
Like a sparrow’s in winter, no neck to be seen.
 
Here was a parade of thousands – soldiers, sailors,
Veterans of war, and tanks trucks and missiles -
While hundreds of spectators,
Warmed by the sun, sat in VIP seats,
And hundreds of thousands lined Moscow’s streets.
 But Vladimir, hunkered down on the dais,
Surrounded by military and political cronies,
Shivered and shook slightly with every spring breeze
That gently wafted in from the steppe, river, or seas:
At age sixty-nine, an old man, cold and alone,
Clutching a green wooly blanket over his knees.
 
When Putin stood to speak to those at Red Square,
He fumbled with his blanket, not sure what he should do,
Take it to the podium or leave it on his chair,
An awkwardness that raised eyebrows on the dais
And a fearful moment for those who were amused.
(Let no one smile or smirk when the tyrant is confused!)

His speech was the briefest by a tyrant anywhere,
Just eleven minutes. He named Ukrainians barbaric neo-Nazis,
That Russia’s heroic forces would vanquish once again,
Drawing on lessons learned and arcane memories
Of World War Two. There’s no room in the world for Nazis,
And no room for barbarians in Russia, my comrades, he said,
So no room anywhere for Ukrainians who’ve turned to the West,
As we bow our heads once again and lay old comrades to rest.
After his speech Putin returned to his seat
And folded the green wooly comforter over his lap,
Looking forward with pleasure to his afternoon nap.
 
Meanwhile, the war, the war, the real war,
Putin’s war in Ukraine rages on,
Ruining cities, destroying bridges and railroads
And burning down homes, forcing families
To seek basements and holes in the ground
For refuge from callow young soldiers
Debasing their own lives and values
By licensed debauchery, raping, plundering
And murdering Ukrainians, who look like no other
Than Russian mothers and fathers,
Sisters and brothers, wives and lovers.
 
When all is done
Ukraine’s cities, bridges and railroads
Will be rebuilt, repaired and restored
But these young Russian men, pawns in the war,
Will never recover, are damaged forever,
Can never become the men they ought to be.
 
But Putin himself, the Perpetrator,
 Who’s never been to war,
Sits at home safely in Moscow,
Cold, old and alone,
With a green woolen blanket over his knees.
Will someone rid us of this tyrant, please?
 

20. The First War Crime Four Days In

Unequally shared are the fortunes
And misfortunes of war.
Think of a boy commanding
A tank crew of four
At age twenty-one,
Vadim Shishimarin,
A proud son of Russia.
Four days into the war.

How lucky am I, was all he imagined.
But untrained, inexperienced,
Unlucky in battle, and well overcome,
The crew abandoned
Their tank before it exploded.  
Lucky again, they lived to fight on.

Then stole a private car,
These four comrades-in-arms,
Lucky once more,
Seeking their way back toward Russian lines,
But meeting en route
In Chupak Village, east of Kyiv,
A Ukrainian man, aged sixty-two,
Unarmed on a bike using his phone.
Unlucky for him, unlucky for all!
 
You have to kill him,
Said one of the crew,
Or he’ll report where we are
And our war will be over.
Vadim,
It’s all up to you.
Shoot him and with luck
Our work will continue.
 
The unlucky, unlikely commander
Obeyed his crew member
And aiming his rifle
At the Ukrainian’s head
Shot him dead on the spot.
This was a war crime,
Just four days into the war,
The first of thousands.
 
How Vadim was captured
Has not been explained.
He appeared in court in Ukraine,
With a shaved head,
Dressed in a blue and grey hoodie
Looking confused, unlucky, scared and alone,
A tragic victim of Vladimir Putin,
A young Russian tank commander, inept and untrained,
Little more than a boy,
Charged with having broken
The laws of war.

At his trial in Kyiv, Vadim pled guilty
To the murder of Oleksandr Shelipov,
Husband, father and grandfather,
And spoke face to face with Shelipov’s widow,
Expressing sorrow, remorse and regret,
Seeking to know whether forgiveness was possible.
No, cried the widow, not possible now,
Not possible yet,
Possibly never.

21. Rivers of Death
 
The rivers of Ukraine are rivers of death.
They are many, and the bridges are few,
Their crossing points dangerous to Russians under stress,
Playing offence in war, seeking victory in weeks, not months,
'Ere the world passes judgment on their competence.
 
However narrow and shallow the rivers,
Russian tanks and trucks need bridges,
Else when they try to ford the rivers,
They become mired in mud like sitting ducks
To Ukrainians armed with missiles
On the opposing river banks.
 
When Ukraine’s intelligence informs
Its fighters that Russian tanks are slugging
Through the bush toward a river,
They simply wait for them,
Wait and watch unseen,
 Biding time and oiling weapons,
Structuring the ambush, while the Russians vainly
Start building wooden bridges or pontoons.
It’s all too easy!
 
There is a crucial point, when some tanks and trucks
                                   Have crossed and the rest are crossing, that the order                                 
 Is shouted, “Fire”, and the massacre begins.
At one such crossing point, a whole battalion was destroyed,
A thousand Russian soldiers, and fifty tanks and trucks.
They hardly knew what hit them, went down like sitting ducks.
Bridge or no bridge, it’s all the same.
The narrow rivers are like trenches.
Who owns the trenches controls the game.
​

22. Crimes against Planet Earth
 
We need a new poetry, a poetic of outrage,
And a new kind of prose, ugly, repulsive,
To deal with the horror, the death and destruction
That is wrought upon civilization itself
By the Russian invasion of civil Ukraine,
The slaughter of innocents, the devastation
Of schools, hospitals and churches, the ruination
Of the social order that Ukrainians have built. 
 
It is time the whole world said “Enough is enough”.
It is time we destroyed Vladimir Putin himself,
And not only by words or by reputation,
But by the joint action of nations appalled
Smashing the invaders and driving them
Back into Russia, and demanding that Russia
Take Putin himself, by the scruff of the neck
And turn him over for trial on crimes to be named.
 
In Ukraine are vast wheat fields blessed by the sun,
Thousands of hectares of grain farms and maize,
Yet with Russia controlling the ports and the roads,
Destroying silos and warehouses
And sewing land mines in farmland,
Most of these products may never be sold
Or even be harvested. Yet Ukraine is known
As the breadbasket of earth, with the richest
Of soils and the most perfect of climates
For producing food for our planet,
And livestock as well. Russia’s war in Ukraine,
Increasing world hunger, is a crime against nature,
Reason enough to unite in demanding
That Vladimir Putin be sent to court in The Hague.
 
Recall that the holocaust once was described
As a crime of such horror that it had never been named.
That crime was in time given a name -- genocide,
But Putin’s destruction of modern Ukraine, not only its cities,
Its town and its villages, but its whole civil society,
Its industry and history, and even its farms and farmlands,
And its ability to function and feed its own people,
Its capacity to hold its place in the world, to trade
With its neighbors and just to survive – those are crimes
Against humanity, of genocide or worse,
Crimes against our world order, against planet earth.

​

23. The Great Liberator

Putin claims that he kindly plans to liberate Ukrainians,
Even if it kills them, as well as thousands of Russians,
Syrians and Chechens
That he has sent into battle, inept and untrained.
But this begs the question:
What do Putin and his friends in the Kremlin
Know about freedom?
Well, they know about prison,
How to deal with dissent and deliver oppression.
 
But the question remains:
How do you liberate people already free?
Do you blow up their homes and say,
Now do you see how you are free?
No longer tied to this or that place,
No longer sleeping in the same bed every night,
No longer going to work every day, no longer voting
For corrupt Jewish Nazis like Volodymir Zalensky.
No longer Ukrainian, now you are Russian
Like me, Vladimir Putin,
And you are still free to be you.
But remember this and be grateful,
(And careful):
You didn’t choose Russia,
Russia chose you.

​

​24. Putin’s Creepy War Tactics
 
In modern warfare, invaders try to win
Not only the war, but hearts and minds
In the lands  they have entered.
Such was a tactic of US intervention
Into people’s lives in various nations,
Iraq, Vietnam . . .  too many to mention.
But the Russians in Ukraine
Are playing a strange, ruthless game,
Not winning people’s hearts,
But destroying their towns and cities,
Places that Russia has even declared
As historically Russian, part of the empire
Of the old USSR.
Yet they aim not to re-build, sustain or repair,
But just to blast the whole country
Into zones of despair.
 
Creepy indeed is the mindset of Putin!
He doesn’t lust for these cities,
Doesn’t care for these people,
Doesn’t care if they’re Ukrainians,
Doesn’t want them as Russians,
Doesn’t care for them dead or alive,
Doesn’t care if he wins
Their hearts and their minds.
His objectives derive
From his own paranoia,
His fear of enemies, not real
Yet fiercely conceived,
His wish for a buffer of concrete and steel,
Ruined cities and rubble
Through which no enemy could steal
Without being seen.
 
We can’t build a fence around Russia, he said.
But we can turn our neighbor Ukraine
Into a harmless desert, a land of the dead.
Then in the north we have the Baltic and Arctic,
These seas we’ll control with our powerful navy.
Later we’ll deal with Finland and Sweden,
Norway, the Baltics and Turkey, said he.
I’m just at the beginning!
I’m Peter the Great! I’m Vladimir Putin!

​

25. World War Three?

World War Three has already started,  
Said Vladimir Putin,
A claim Joe Biden rejected
As Russian hyperbole,
Despite the global impact 
Of Russia’s war in Ukraine,
Which can’t be contained
Within the two nations.
 
The conflict creates hunger in Africa
And tensions in Asia,
While the wheat and the grains
Go un-reaped in Ukraine
Or lie rotting in silos, or are stolen
By Russians and sold in black markets,
Now China seizes this moment
To send fighter jets over Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Nicaragua
Sees a chance to sign on
As a new ally of Putin,
Offering his navy
A new port of call.
 
Perhaps the truth is half way between
Putin and Biden, or perhaps even
There’s more truth to Putin’s contention
 Than western powers would like to admit.
 
Putin has tested the US and NATO
And found them lacking in wit,
Courage, compassion, and spirit
With neither the will nor the heart
To confront Russia directly
Or give timely support
To Ukraine’s need for weapons of war.
Biden has spoken for all and made clear
That limited, non-lethal weapons
Are all the West will provide,
Or we may cause the war to grow wider
And become what he fears
                      More than the eclipse of Ukraine:                       
What Putin has threatened
A third global war.
 
In brief, here’s Biden's message: Don’t poke the bear.
Appease the war-monger and hope for the best.
Sacrifice part or all of Ukraine to save peace in the West.

​