Just Stop - Donald Keyman

Vlad has woken from his slumbers
Out into the world he blunders
He can’t see that things have changed
He stares madly, wild, deranged

He must have been asleep for years
Immune to all the cries and tears
Belligerent stranger in this new world
He finds an old flag to unfurl

The neighbours know not to underrate
Vlad’s temper and his hate
So they leave what they were dreaming of
To make another box of molotovs

Donald Keyman


Image : Pixabay - David_Peterson

Rewind - Richard Fleming

Wind Time back. Rewind Time.

Make the struck towers rise from dust,
reconstruct themselves:
glass, concrete, girders, walls,
a huge jigsaw
interlocked,
complete again.

Lights come on, phones chirp like crickets.
In reconstructed work-stations,
fingers dance on keyboards again;
vending machines cough
then spew out pungent brew;
air-con sighs then resumes;
elevators ascend, descend;
video conferences resume mid-
sentence, emails beep,
digital clocks flicker
like quick, green lizards.

Wind Time back. Rewind Time.

Time restarts
as though it had never ended.

Hopes, innocence, daydreams, boredom:
all the mundane certainties of ordinary lives
are reaffirmed.
Shoes, handbags, mobile phones, flesh,
warped by intense heat:
these un-melt, re-form,
resume their former shapes.
The terrible, unearthly screams
subside.

Wind Time back. Rewind Time.

Backwards
the soft clouds drift;
birds fly in reverse.
Those grim death-planes,
stiletto-silver in the morning sun,
withdraw, like daggers, from the shattered towers,
whose twin glass skins, pristine again,
shimmer
like smooth, un-rippled water.

Richard Fleming

In Memory of Dr. Li Wenliang - Kathy Figueroa

In memory of a good doctor in China
Who, about the new virus, sounded an alarm
He was aware that people were becoming ill
And wanted to inform folks, to save them from harm

December 30th, he posted a message
Using the Chinese messaging service, “WeChat”
Which riled local Communist Chinese overlords
Authoritarians who didn’t stand for that

Days later, he was called to the police station
And “reprimanded for spreading rumours online”
Forced to say he’d committed an “unlawful act”
And threatened with “detainment,” rather than a fine

He had to go back to work at the hospital
And on January 10th caught the dire disease
The brave doctor’s condition worsened steadily
To a state not even critical care could ease

Over twenty-eight thousand folks are now sickened
Because the courageous doctor’s words weren’t heeded
And the government didn’t advise the public
About health precautions that were sorely needed

Exponentially, the tragic death toll rises
From this virulent and mysterious new flu
Today, Wuhan, China, news is even sadder
For now good Dr. Li Wenliang has died, too

Kathy Figueroa

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

December 6th, 1989 - Kathy Figueroa

I can still remember
opening my studio door
and the shock of seeing the newspaper
in the hallway, on the floor

And what that unbidden issue
of the Toronto Star said -
fourteen women at Ecole Poly-technique
in Montreal massacred …shot dead

And I remember the fear
That slowly crept up my spine
As I looked at that awful
Early December headline

Was this surprise at my door a warning
some sort of indirect threat
that if you’re female, bright, and ambitious
this is what you might get?

As it turned out, it was left
by a man with a good intention
who wanted to apprise me of the news
not cause me apprehension

I felt compelled to write this
to mark the tragic date
when common human decency
was overruled by hate

When fourteen innocent lives
with so much potential were ended
by ignoble and evil actions
which can never be defended

Kathy Figueroa

The Demise of Notre Dame - Kathy Figueroa

Something happened to Notre Dame
And Paris, France, won’t be the same
Its demise wrought by fire and flame
And so a hallowed landmark falls

A careless accident, it’s thought
By workman’s mishap, perhaps wrought
The dreadful blaze now being fought
By those who such disaster calls

Paris, our hearts go out to thee
In this time of calamity
A huge historic tragedy
The church reduced to smoldering walls

Kathy Figueroa

This poem was written as a response to seeing newscasts of Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, France, burning on April 15th, 2019. (Please note I’ve used “Notre Dame” the way Americans pronounce it.)

Unsinkable - Richard Fleming

Stiff-collared and stiff-upper-lipped,
they bade their womenfolk go first,
with children, into lifeboats
that were only there for show,
then, ramrod-straight on tilting decks,
they braved the icy, ill-starred night
or went below to congregate
with other men, pale, poker-faced,
in state-rooms loud with jokes and boasts,
to camouflage their growing fear,
as cocktails, spilled, or scattered cards
made nonsense of forlorn attempts
at nonchalance.

In that dark realm of bitter cold,
of signal-flares and glacial stars,
where massively impassive bergs
moved sure and silently as gods;
where all around, like tombstones, ranged,
squat ice-flows gleamed a ghostly white,
snow fell, in feathered silence, then
on black waves breaking endlessly
on lifeboats, where survivors prayed,
their upturned faces, pinched and wan,
for fathers, lovers, husbands, sons;
but when such supplication failed,
prayed for salvation.

Richard Fleming