Paradigm shift

Angry prose aimed at Mr Putin, written in March 2022. When we were new to this terrible war.

You thought it wasn’t real,
Or you thought you would steal,
Because you thought the Ukraine was just an invention,
A modern Western convention,
You thought it was
A geopolitical hype, just ripe
For you.

You thought it was simply convenience;
Or that the people would change allegiance…
A Yalta dream,
A pigment of Helsinki imagination,
Or a 20th century aberration
But no. You got that all wrong didn’t you.

Your soldiers have got frost bite
Waiting to fight.
Maybe fallen with Covid or flu
Sitting in their tanks all frozen and blue
Or in trenches dug without thanks
In miserable mud from churned up lawns
Aside frozen thorns.
You planned that wrong too didn’t you

And I wonder,
As I walk and talk,
Breathing in the grey, damp morning air
This dull spring day,
How will you keep the death of 10,000 soldiers a secret?
Their mother, father, brother, sister, aunt and uncle in mourning,
Their hands trembling
Tears clear and falling
They read their dying son’s private message 

Dear mum and dad,
I didn’t mean to die
I died in a war
Where we broke the law.
I say goodbye 
Don’t forget, I love you.

Messages of love from the heart
Of dying soldiers
With nothing left to lose 
But speak the truth.
That you got wrong. 
Didn’t you!?

Is this what you planned Mr Putin?
Are you getting spammed?
About the latest sanctions?
The sheer weight of your infractions?
The burst bubble of the rouble,
The credit cards that crash,
The gas cargo that cannot dock,
The shares that fall in shock
Unemployment’s starting to rock.

People have begun to bark,
Their sugar will be rationed soon
Not because your people are sweet enough
Because you started a war on stuff.
Inflation has begun to spark.
Your politics, a fumble
Your economics, a stumble
And you of least people
Are never humble.
Will you live a lie til you die
When reckoning is nigh?
Will your yes men flip?
You must be working out
How you leave a sinking ship,
It’s working out to be much more than a blip.
You got this well wrong didn’t you.

Is this what you planned Mr Putin?
This war may last longer,
While Nato has got stronger.
To protect your stake
You use deep fake
But from here to Shanghai, it doesn’t convince in any province. 

Are your nights a misery Mr P?
How close really is Mr Xi?
Well only he knows
Which way that wind blows.

Maybe we had a little laugh back in 2019
When we thought an actor,
A voice actor and comedian,
Mr Zelensky 
Won the popular vote;
We innocently thought, didn’t we,
How can an actor run a country?!
But it isn’t the first time
That actors in their prime,
Sit head of parliament,
With decisions over disarmament.

An actor knows charisma
They learn the power of self.
He won seventy three per cent-
He was definitely meant
To be.
So no. Sorry. We got him wrong.
Mr Zelensky is very real
He aint imaginary, on a bookshelf,
Or sitting on a fence.
They offered to get him out,
Whip him away
But he said he’d stay.
He prefers to act loyal in self-defence
And now he proves he is of sterner stuff.
The world has seen
How he speaks.
An advocate for democracy

Sitting at his desk unmoved,
How he calls leaders around the globe
Using the hi tech we all just learned
To deliver a speech to the White House, 
To Parliament, the Palace of Versailles.
He faces the cameras in camouflage green,
Cool, collected and serene.
He was an actor
But that career is very much stunted,
He and his people are,
Worryingly, the hunted.

@naturetorque photography