a young soldier follows his orders

an explosion rips apart a hospital wing

dust swirls peacefully in a sunlit shaft

people scramble to uncover the mother
whose hip is smashed her baby no longer
waiting to be born she screams please
just kill me now as she is carried over rubble
to an emergency room where soon
her wish for release is granted two souls
slip silently away ascend gracefully
over the battered earth into gray winter sky

in Bucha torture victims are unearthed
hands still tied broken limbs bruised faces
shot in the head or cudgeled to death by a
rough beast who eats russian boys for lunch
sends dark oily tentacles slithering
across the blackened soil and burnt crops
it twines around picturesque villages
where women are being raped with an audience
of husbands children & drooling faces in uniform

in zaporizhzhia a nuclear plant is shelled again
and again its hot angry atoms are barely contained
inside orcs are parking their tanks safe a moment
frozen on an event horizon where time is forever
where every atrocity is imagined and made manifest
a cave where morbid projections
march endlessly forward

and now they are here
evil intention that must be fought
om mani padme hum
a flower from the dark mud
satchidananda
the ultimate subjective experience
of unchanging reality
blessed be

JGM 091022