Poem #1286: Déjà Vu Encores

Thru the worst level of conflict, Kyiv is still standing.
Their resilience is triumph of the human spirit.
Photo Courtesy: Euronews.com/Facebook 

Every night

I wanna pick up the phone

And be like

Call you up at home

But now it's always night

Where you once called home

A constant starless midnight

Haunts its skies

Going on and on and on

Like a Déjà Vu encore

I wish to hold your hands

And close the distance

To hold your hurt

Till it hurts to hold

Anymore

And still to hold

Until we share true warmth

Sometimes, I hear your voice

Louder than a train's horns

And when the bombings cease

And the smoke's gone

With the wind

Kyiv is still standing

These words sing

The sweetest music

Hope is a living thing:

Kyiv is still standing.

Akpan

Poem #1282: Holodomor Legacy

Nursing Ukrainian mother victim
of Russian shelling.
Photo Courtesy: @Kateryna_Kruk (Twitter)

Starting with the Red Terror of 1918, Lenin and Stalin shared responsibility—by enforced famine, brutal imprisonment, mass killing, ethnic cleansing or assassination—for the deaths of some 20 million. (Coincidentally, Lenin and Stalin shared the same cook—the grandfather of current Russian President Vladimir Putin.) — Smithsonian

Your grandfather

Cooked for Lenin

Went further

To do for Stalin

Both Mass murderers

And Genocidal Twins

Along came Vladimir

To correct past sins

To shine the light down

And cut darkness like a shroud

Instead you and your boys

Trying to decide

Flashing lethal toys

You indulge genocide

To correct previous genocide

You know better, Putin

If you know grandpa's legacy

Remember Holodomor

And its inhumanity

Remember the perpetrator

Joseph Stalin

Creating artificial famine

Starving Ukrainians

To death

In Donetsk and Luhansk

They call it Hunger-death

Holodomor in Ukrainian

He filled that part

Of Ukraine with Russians

Now Vlad gone mad

Makes to claim

The very same

Parcel of land

In Ukraine

For Russia

Reliving your grandfather's

Evil genius Master's

Legacy ain't you

Get ready to lose

History will record you

On a list for fools.

Akpan