{"id":366032,"date":"2022-04-11T06:03:58","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T20:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=366032"},"modified":"2022-04-11T06:03:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-10T20:03:58","slug":"ukraine-and-crimea-poems-of-2014-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/ukraine-and-crimea-poems-of-2014-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine and Crimea poems of 2014 revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe passage of life should\u00a0show; it should abrade. And when life\u00a0stops, a certain space\u2014however small\u2014 should be left scarred by\u00a0the grand and damaging parade. Things shouldn\u2019t be so hard.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014an excerpt from Kay Ryan\u2019s poem, Things Shouldn\u2019t Be So Hard<\/strong><\/p>\n

As luck of the Irish would have it, a box of books and poems I thought lost to typhoons on Tinian arrived here on Saipan on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. It had been sent from Tinian to Las Vegas and arrived there after\u00a0I left to\u00a0return here in November 2021. Among the poems were four different types of poems I had written about Putin\u2019s blitzkrieg annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol in March 2014. Ironically they were written eight years ago (I had dated them) during the same time frame now in March 2022 that Putin is making war in Ukraine. Readers may find that the similarities in Putin\u2019s tactics are ironic and deliberate with the month and date of current hostilities. <\/p>\n

Also interesting for purposes of inclusion here is that April is National Poetry Month and I wrote four different types of poems back then about Putin\u2019s expansion of the Russian Empire. One of the poems is a villanelle, which is a French verse form\u00a0consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately\u00a0in the following stanzas. I have approximated the form here. Nothing has been changed or revised in the poems, their titles, and dates as I noted back then.<\/p>\n

I have to in all honesty tell you I had\u00a0completely forgotten writing this group of four poems. I\u2019m also assuming due to the completion date of the last one that they might have\u00a0appeared in the Saipan Tribune around this date during National Poetry Month in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The coincidence, the timing, the similarities in historical fact is truly amazing. Let us hope and pray for cessation of the bombing, deaths, and the safety of Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n

A Sister Country in Crisis<\/strong>
\n(a villanelle for Ukraine & Crimea, written between Feb. 14 to March 14, 2014)<\/em><\/p>\n

A sister country in crisis
\nits neighbor giving it a shove
\nusing military vices
\nborders cut up into slices
\nfrom the cold east and from above
\na sister country in crisis
\nbig bear heeds its own advices
\nlittle bear squeezed by iron glove
\nhas no nuclear devices
\nTatars rank lower on indices
\nnow back in the country they love
\na sister country in crisis
\nPutin plays chess, cool cat and mices
\ncarefully plotting every move
\nusing military vices
\neagle opens its orifice
\nand offers up a peaceful dove
\nneighboring countries feel crisis
\nmoney lost in trade crevices.<\/p>\n

Haiku for Ukraine and Crimea <\/strong>
\n(March 21, 2014)<\/em><\/p>\n

been through this before
\nmother bear shuts the door
\nTatars home at last
\nUkrainian cold spring
\nraining down in Crimea
\nEurope twitches
\na river of realistic fears
\nballistic ethnic fears
\nCrimean linguistics<\/p>\n

A Limerick for Ukraine\/Crimea<\/strong><\/p>\n

ex KGB boss Vladimir Putin
\nhad a mouth he seldom put his foot in
\nhe moved on the Crimea quite quickly
\nnow the Ukraine is feeling quite sickly
\nso far at least no shootin.<\/p>\n

A Sonnet for Sevastopol and Crimea<\/strong>
\n(written March 31, 2014)<\/em><\/p>\n

Thousands of protesters out in the spring rain
\nMassed in a city square call out for democracy
\nIn Kiev, the capitol of Ukraine, they all long
\nTo join the European Union and be more free
\nTheir motives – economic mobility – quite noble
\nAfter months of protest they get rid of a corrupt boss
\nKnowing not of coming events in the port of Sevastopol
\nThe entire Crimean\u00a0peninsula would become a total loss
\nPutin felt oustering the boss made push comes to shove
\nAnd made a checkmate move from his KGB master book
\nHe slipped a classic Communist iron fist into a glove
\nAnnexing the entire Crimea was the chess move he took
\nNow Russian troops mass on Ukraine\u2019s eastern border
\nAs Putin moves his knights and puts all his pawns in order.<\/p>\n

Joey ‘Pepe Batbon’ Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong>
\nJoey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe passage of life should\u00a0show; it should abrade. And when life\u00a0stops, a certain space\u2014however small\u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":331237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,21,13843,772],"class_list":["post-366032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-life","tag-pepe-batbon","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}