Putin Ukraine invasion tagged posts

  VLADIMIR PUTIN INVADES MY DREAMS

                                        By Andrew Hidas

Fresh off the shingles vaccine,
arm sore, body leaden,
spirit damp and porous,
Vladimir Putin invades my dreams
through a long night I long to repel.

I want him out! gone! no more of
those lizard eyes and pursed lips
bearing down on my weakened
defenses, looking to run
roughshod over all I hold dear.

Groaning to a barely wakened state,
I lapse again, the nightmare resuming,
the assault relentless, Putin throwing
all he owns (and he owns everything)
into a fire of his own making
as lives all around us burn.

Names cross my consciousness
like some Ticker of Times Square,
Navalny…Yashin…Kara-Murza,
dissidents facing the unspeakable
of poisonings and prison,
their courage inconceivable
under Putin’s soulless gaze.

Dawn looms and the thrashings of night
only intensify, pleas from the gloaming
to find ...

With friends and intimates, we continue to talk of many things as we go about our daily lives. But those lives don’t feel quite the same as they did just two weeks ago, because our world no longer feels the same.

Barely under the surface of most every interaction, every move hither and yon tending to errands, exercise, shopping excursions and, poetically a couple of mornings ago, our first view of a newborn gifted by posterity to young friends, there looms the specter, the worry, the hope, for some sliver of good news from the battle unto death the Ukrainian people are currently waging against the Putin invaders.

It is a battle, make no mistake, that they are waging on behalf of us all.

Perhaps it is our own vulnerability, among other factors, that seems to be weighing most on us as we tiptoe toward a spring that may be delayed severely for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, or perhaps never experienced a...