I cannot forget Mariuopl’s brave defenders.
Now, thrown into play by their surrender
to Putin and Russian offenders
of all that is sacred in Mary’s city.
Now, left to evildoers without pity.
Media seems to ignore this ignominy
replacing the glory of the sexier story
of fighting to the death, which has more cachet
as breaking news than a prisoner switch, any day.
Misplaced attention and failure to attend details
endangers Ukrainian defenders on the rails.
Instead of an exchange, they face trials,
and more victimization mile after mile
by the butchers who claim those who fought back
are war criminals, to cover their own tracks.
Mariupol’s men, women and children were blown off the map.
Ukraine’s borders scattered by Russia’s attempt to overlap
its peaceful neighbors, no longer members of the USSR.
Now seeking a new democratic order, looking afar
to The West whose history mirrors their own more fully.
Putin’s Russia determined to remain a USSR bully.
Now, Ukrainian heroes are more in need of our protection
and our media looking for its own glory screens off in defection.
Shine the light on heroes’ lives Russia bends to their destruction.
Use your news power to defend each hour of their lives and protect them.
annarino writes 
FALLING FROM A MORE PERFECT UNION
Alito’s words stilled my own.
A falling body has no time
to waste on words when breath
is so precious and undermined
by space displaced by diving
thoughts toward a very dark place.
It is not just Roe which falls with me;
but, likely Obergefell, Griswold
and Loving, too. So old,
I recall them all. The sacred tome
which gives the rights owed humanity
is our constitution which gives privacy a home
of safety, freedom and security.
Alito steals them all from me.
The greater fear is that he would say
mob rule would bind our hands again
with state’s rights to up-end a nation’s democracy.
The word privacy does not exist, so he says.
Nor does the word slavery, nor contraception,
nor sexuality, nor women’s and persons of color’s
right to vote and have a say in lives they own;
because they don’t in the words originally
written for white land-owning gentlemen alone.
But that is the point, one no longer hidden.
White male supremacy, and protecting the wealthy
is Republicans’ true north. Which is why
even women support letting democracy die.
Why even kind men still vote for extremist
candidates they know can save their wealth
by telling the most outrageous lies.
Stolen election is not the first lie.
The first was that women and Africans are less
than any white man of wealth could allow
to be free, for fear their fields of wealth
once shared, would lie fallow.
I thought I could no longer write poetry
while my love for country makes me cry
knowing my beloved Law is often denied.
The law is sacrosanct, you see.
Alito’s words mean the courts are no longer free.
And that will be the death of the rights
of you and me, and perhaps the world
whom my country once led toward democracy.
The world is falling along with me.
I am not alone if you join me and vote
for those who would protect us as we fall,
and right the wrong words which stand so tall
we can no longer recognize truth at all.
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Filed under COMMENTARY, POETRY, POLITICS
Tagged as constitutional rights, end of democracy, extremism, Griswold, Justice Alito, Loving, miscegenation, Obergefell, ROE V. WADE, rule of law, slavery, VOTE, voter suppression, white supremacist, women