Written by Eksentrika
🌻🌻🌻 THIS POST IS REGULARLY UPDATED 🌻🌻🌻
We have a friend in Ukraine. Her name is Alyona Plotnikova. Despite the 8,243 km distance, she knows so much about Malaysia because she has many Malaysian friends.
We’re in touch with her on a daily basis, constantly asking if she and her family are doing alright, and consistently sending poems to her via Facebook Messenger.But there’s a small problem: We’re running out of poems.
If you have any poems or art centered on the themes of hope, peace, love, and courage, please email them to [email protected] or submit them directly and we’ll send them to our dear friend, Alyona so that she may read them aloud to her fellow Ukrainians to uplift their spirits.
🌻🌻🌻 #PoemsForUkraine #NoToWar 🌻🌻🌻
I yearn to be with you
To walk with you into the unknown
To face it together with courage, with trust
To hold you in warm arms
To give you a warm fire’s safety
To delight you with many kisses and embraces.
Though I am here and you are there
I am with you
We are together in the broken heart of sadness
We will always be together in our broken-hearted world.
What else to do but feel, let go, open, open, open
To each other, to our broken heart of sadness.
– Joan Whitacre
Let it so be
Even if this destiny seems to lead
Only to desolation
Somewhat greater despair
Than what was before
There will be no regrets
Evermore no turning back
Hope has never worn thin
Despite the longest bend of road
And greater nobility lingers yet
To make for heroic tales
That will one day be told
And so, on the journey goes
Endless as it may seem
The determination that girds the weary traveller
Keeps the soul from growing old
And each battle of the unexpected
Brings the heart closer to home
As unseen observers stare enthralled
At these unparalleled victories of present day
But this hour will pass
And I will stand steady
As I hope you will
Courage, dear friend.
– Susanna Khoo
Dream a million dreams tonight
While rest falls upon your eyes
For better moments yet to come
To cast light upon despondencies
And champion heroes unsung
If only to be free of fears unspoken
To expectantly greet the beckoning dawn
Wistful yet ever aware
Of the resonant realities
But faith does not desert us here
Beyond these towering shadows
Lies our alternate ending
While we live, there is yet hope
– Susanna Khoo
The world watches in horror
Ukrainians fleeing in terror
Escaping from dusk to dawn
The plunderings by a madman,
Obsessively clinging on
Like an old, toxic friend
Overhead I hear the warplanes
Above the sunflower plains
They shine the brightest gold.
The resistance, brave and bold
Waving blue and yellow high
Fighting without a single ally.
Amidst the military clashes,
Sunflowers rise from the ashes.
The people may feel the strain
But they will and are rising up again.
May Ukraine reclaim its sovereignty
Write its own history
Once again, a free country!
– Emelyn Lee
Men in power make grand
plans
It makes them feel
grand
They’ve got to grandstand
All the women and men
Die on their command
The blood’s not from their hand
We’ll never understand
How they can
But we will always feel it
But they
Can’t.
– Ista Kyra
She buried her grandparents
Then had to follow them underground, still breathing
A sign of the times when the sun shines over the dead
And the living hide beneath bunker beds
But good neighbors keep watching
5,125 miles away but we’re not forgetting
we’re praying and hoping
you stay strong, keep it up and keep it on,
for your sons and daughters
mothers and fathers
brothers and sisters
we’ll hold each other up
keep our hopes up
the sun will shine again
as sure as the living will smile again
And the victor is not the one who takes up arms
But the ones who linked hearts.
– Ista Kyra
When people have the right
The might within themselves
To do according to daylight.
The flag firmly does fly,
The colours are blue and yellow, so true.
Untarnished by ill-will
Where loving the neighbours
Has never been a rue
In this era of cooperation
Ukraine advances with
hope, peace, love, and courage
United in responsibility with the
World to maintain the proper and fair exchange between each other.
Where today, the sovereignty of a people
Never be given away
To the rage of a bully.
Long Live, Ukraine!
– Kamini K Arichandran, Malaysia
I see skies of yellow and blue,
Covered with smoke and rain of ashes.
People swimming in ruined grounds.
Frightened, worried, and uneasy.
When will it come to an end?
Its beauty is tormented by blazing flames.
With roaring missiles and gunshots,
Blooming trees and flowers turned to gray.
Colder than the midst of winter.
The world will never be the same again.
Armed men in camouflage suits,
Fighting for their beloved home.
Children wailing in their mother’s arms,
Not knowing what their future holds.
How much lives will be sacrificed?
In our hearts, we held the most powerful defense.
Stronger than any nuclear weapons.
It is the love of God from heaven.
Listening to our cries and broken souls.
He will heal this planet Earth.
I see skies of yellow and blue,
A free and peaceful country.
You are not alone in your darkest hour.
Endless prayers for a brighter tomorrow.
Be strong and have faith, God will prevail.
– Ma. Angelica Gaceta, Philippines
🌻
Though war upon rains
The spirit of your people rise
We are at helpless awe
Inspired horror
Rooting for the warrior
That you are
Ukraine
May you reign Free
Of Putin’s tyranny
– Sky Lark Crow
Who caught your laughter
At the throat
And crushed it in a vice?
Who caught the dreaming
In your eyes
And shuttered it in a void?
Who
Ripped
Your heart
And made you raging Kali?
These are not my questions;
We both know the answers.
I will not also ask:
Why did you enable him
Through the days weeks years
Why did you allow
The silence of the victim
To speak your only role
I will not ask that either
For you and I know
The sinews of invisible prisons
Draw their strength from a thousand-year history.
I will ask this:
Now that you are finally free
Why do you bind him to your back
And watch him smash your skull?
Why do you let him
Still
Infect
Your waking breaths?
In perpetual motion
Your Kali destroys herself;
Your Kali dances
Intoxicated by grief;
Your Kali rages
Sorrow into bloodlust.
We learned from the womb:
When the goddess Kali
Vanquished the demons
She couldn’t stop her dance
And when her wrath
Threatened
The entire universe
Her Shiva stepped before his beloved
And lay on her path
Complete in his knowing of them in her
You have no Shiva, you think,
To stop your dismantling –
You have no Shiva, you think
To vanish your pain
Caught in the lie
That we can’t do it both ways –
You are Kali.
You are Shiva.
You
Are
Shiva.
– Saras Manickam, a writer
One man who claims to be a world leader,
Sits in his air-conditioned palace,
Ordering bombs to fall,
To a city located 875km away,
As one leader who claims he’s just human,
Wears a vest and lifts his gun,
The bombs fall and fall they do,
Yet they only bring the world closer,
A lot closer to one another.
– Sukhbir Cheema
The skies grow dark
They hear a song-less lark
Flap its wings
And can’t help but think
‘Bring me his sins’
Florid and lurid
Aberrant and crooked
The sins of a man
Who begat a plan
To incinerate a land
The skies grow dark
And they fearlessly rally
Every hallway, every alley
Every nook, every cranny
Fortitudinous and valiant
Oh, those young combatants!
Hushed in a valley
Embraced by artillery
Ready to fuckin’ sully
The sins
Of a beast
In the guise of a man
Whose anathema began
As the skies grew dark
– Karisshma Kaur, Malaysia
🌻🌻🌻
We accept short stories, poems, opinion pieces, and essays on a complimentary basis.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.