#peacepoetry A collaborative poem by Sandile Ngidi and Yuri Kageyama March 2022 ~ (still ongoing)
Sandile
We are crushed still, bulldozed, uneasy.
Give bread, paska, borscht now.
Sink the molten nerves, war hormones.
Pray fair winds, pebbles, sumac delights.
Rachel Corrie flowers, Westbank’s red ruins.
Yuri
Phan Thi Kim Phuc’s back,
Silent chants, red smoke, orphans cry.
Blue and yellow flurry on Tokyo streets,
“We stand with Ukraine.”
Fissions of fear, hypersonic glide.
Kent State My Lai Mariupol
Akiko Yosano tells us: Mountains will move,
Shuddering dark loins, tangled hair to lips.
Sandile
Stoop, Russians, stoop,
War dogs eat death you planted in the fields.
Spit its blood like wastewater.
Smear the gunpowder to sanctify your sword.
But no gun can kill the hills’ brooding smiles,
Butterflies will survive the heavy rains.
Yuri
When “tactical” dwarfs Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
“Neo-Nazi” is not a name for anyone,
Retreat sends an attack more frenzied than ever.
Poets speak above the silence,
Purify the Meaninglessness
Of words gone Mad.
Sandile
This ominous cloud
Racial hate in sniper fire.
Your fresh light
Brave in stunning pearls.
Still stubborn as our knees.
Your tenacious love,
Shireen Abu Aqleh.
Vibrant in the storms of black powder rains.
Black stones.
Red shrines.
Coral noctilucence.
