PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

As I watch this drama of: As I watch this drama of great heroism and great tragedy unfold, I'm thinking the same thoughts that you so elegantly expressed. Yes, "Mr. Z is courage personified". But my feelings of admiration, compassion and awe are mixed with anxiety. As always, your wake-up calls entail a global picture. You shrewdly see current events (what the media cherry picks for us to care about on any given day) in a wider scope and how each nation is a connected player.    This is always an illuminating, although often chilling, experience. It deepens our understanding of our interconnectedness and forces us outside of ourselves. Americans, especially, need more of this perspective because many tend to be isolationists unless the media is pounding a specific international drum before they move on to something else.    I didn't know Israel was mediating. Yes, that's very ironic!   You created a very realistic scenario, but I pray we don't have to go down that road. Your awareness and concern is inspiring. Watching with you.         

Thank you.  I realized, while: Thank you.  I realized, while reading your comment, that I had fouled the 14th and 15th lines---which I have now corrected.  They do not change the poem, just make it a little more cosmetically "fit."  But thank you for understanding, and so gracefully explicating, the metaphor that I pursued.

I believe it is a valuable: I believe it is a valuable skill for a poet to make us see ourselves in a poem. This innovative introspection does just that with admirable honesty and resonance. Making the past failures an entity in itself and correcting that past self retrospectively was a clever construct, and it was very cathartic and rejuvenating to see the positive result of all that trial and error: It created the superb poet that you are.    A portrait of inner victory. Well done. 

Like Poe's classic, the: Like Poe's classic, the viewpoint (In this case an injured third party and not the avenger) causes us to feel the rage that consumes the narrator. In your high-voltage twist on the classic, the offended is not desiring vengeance for himself, but an innocent victim, which creates an interesting moral dilemma: would murder be a crime or healing for a defenseless and persecuted segment of society?   In your swift and well-ordered universe, justice was done when the pompous scoffer lost his ability to intimidate so that the victims "need neither fear nor flee his dominance/  / which is, merely, a mask and false construct:/ an honorific for his arrogance/.    Being knocked off his gleeful high horse was enough.   An intriguing and astute example of great writing.   

Death Happening: A large number of wounded, as portrayed  here, are in flight. Civilians trying to fler terrorized, why? Worry about radiation, sustenance, reaching a border, leaving a home. . These past two years we counted Covid-19 dead and dying, saw families torn by deaths of young people parents grandparents friends teachers those beloved's who we hoped to spend our lives with. We are still recovering. . Imagine yourself hearing conspiracy theories about germ warfare, waking up to explosions that kill horribly. That is what they're going through inside the borders of Ukraine. . Some insiders are questioning Putin's health, his sanity. He is the one calling the shots, dropping the bombs, killing innocent people, targeting neighborhoods, targeting homes and apartment buildings. Imagine huddling in a bunker waiting for bombs to stop. This violates international law. Of all the wars, including Vietnam and all the war since, this one has the most coverage, it is reaching us through visuals reaching the most people, because of the visuals coming out of that country. . We have seen fires and floods we have seen homes destroyed, we have watched people walking out of Oregon, California, the floods in Texas, the East Coast, then Europe and Asia. Where homes once were, where lives had been for generations. It was another war scene for them, for what they lost. . The difference being that in USA and elsewhere there was quick help, but Ukraineans are trapped and no one is coming fast enough.  Imagine no help coming, no place to go, no way to get out. That's hell and Putin is responsible for that manufactured hell. .  Good poem. Topical and  emotional. Thank you for writing it down.  . Lady A .

Yes, it's fair to imagine politics melts away in survival mode:   I doubt there is a book that exists which has told the whole truth about any given war. I'm sure at least a few have truly tried, but I think it's unlikely any have succeeded. To really understand all of why these things happen, we'd have to unwind a ball of string that goes back to the generations ago, if not to the beginning of civlization itself. At our best, we're gathering the biggest pieces we can to examine, hopefully before they're shattered by the bombs of the next day or conflict. And doing so if you're on the ground? The enemy is who ever is doing the shooting you're running from at that moment.

always rolling or trying to: always rolling or trying to roll