Our Ransomed Gaze

Volodymyr says we should not.

But this is not our kin's struggle.

No Stars and Stripes.

Or is it?

If we stay away,

Russia will not end the world!

What bounty of souls will it take,

The inaugurated jester then demands?

Why should New York or LA care about this?

Allow it to interrupt our long-awaited vacations?

Make Our filthy fuel more expensive?

Isn't it too much to ask

For us to care?

Grab your cell phone

Quickly swipe to a different page

Or better yet,

Turn off the news.

'Tis the American way.

We shall be entertained!

Many said the same when Adolph,

With his shoulder-height gang signs

And deadly puppets in high boots

Kissed Chamberlain's cheeks while

Creating prisons for the many

Who questioned his flaccid mask of superiority,

He groped at his belted gut,

Grieving that his swift rise to power

Hidden behind an unfurled swastika

Camouflaging the Viennese closet his mother

Had filled with her Semitic legacies

Still, left him so unsated!

To ruin others was his path to legitimacy,

For that one nation is never enough.

Do we now believe that our flat, digitized earth

Can tolerate this horror film remake?

It will never come to us?

Wilson's tiptoe through neutrality

Tripped us into our dirgeful death waltz

Through filthy trenches in The Great War.

Yet all this has not wisened us.

Not Germany's rampage through Plsen

To Bohemia and beyond.

Almost a hundred years older

Our wisdom reckons it best not to clash

With this latest parvenu?

Shall we instead make dirty deals

To fend off puffy-faced Putin's pursuits,

Leaving him to slaughter NATO's neighbor?

Will Drumpf again call it Genius

When Lviv is no longer quiet?

And Poland again becomes the scena

For the onslaught of fascist invaders?

Will the oceans keep us safe,

The way they did not in '41?

Shall we try our luck just once more

At placating the madman

Who would ransom our better souls?

Photo of cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine

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