Twyku for the Lemur born in Kyiv Zoo

So hope Bayraktar
Maybe you will fly
A captive life far from Madagascar
Is a caged house bombed better
Than the conflict upon the forest of your kin?
What is it to win?
The slow growing of a tree
To full vigour
The spread of mangrove by the sea
Only this is victory.

War drums

Grasses to ashes, ashes to the Grapes of Wrath
Fibrous humus crushed beneath the heavy laden hoof
What cause is this but thirst?
The sparse Sahara creeps
Past pillars of Hercules
Across the short sea to Sicilly
And in the West, the ice face of the Shore weeps.

We have left barrels uncast
A waste of fireworks far up a mountain pass
Silos of have built missiles
Half filled with grain
A just in time refined to adjust
The severity of pain.

What can justice be? In this time
Of Kings made children
Toys of the tools still writhing in their hands
A screech a swatch on clouded heaven
A tremor where we stand.

The demand curve shows a human surplus
The cost of death has decimated
The price of life a hockey stick
Of possibility and purpose.

This edifice of rock and light, of copper
Built atop a ziggurat, the tilted axis teetering
A hairpin slipped, the lever live
The young colt moves to cantering.

The free world has betrayed its name
Built its opposite by reflection
And seethes beneath a film of scum
As Olympus wars in insurrection. 

A palace

See the light cut
See the tumbling dust aeolian
Caught in a shaft of the high window
Hear the footfalls that echo
Across the hall
The wide handled balustrade
The chairs that stretch broad across the walls.

The residents flit about the coiling light
Scurry under doors
The empty space of silent night
Etched by a rustle on the floor.

These palaces
Shuttered with the fountains running
Stuttering with ruined walls
Butlered, polished and foresaken
A far cry from anguished calls.

We know the tent camps are numbered
Crowded in a click on busy screens
And that water drops on a marble floor
In a sumptuous space unseen.

Did it make a sound? Or prove another law
If no one saw the hand that made
The key turn in the door?
The palaces are locked while people starve
We have seen this all, before.

Struggle on the Steppe

How long can last a vicious tumult
Between two men
Struck through the foot with a bolt?