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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