TO BEAR OR NOT BEAR ARMS /FUGITIVE SECURITY

Two Poems by Alex Nodopaka

📸VISUALS📸

❗️Video from inside the apartment during a missile attack in Kyiv.#Kyiv #Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/SRgk0WXU5F

— Aarian  (@Worldnews195) February 26, 2022

NOTE: This video is NOT from Alex Nodopaka's niece's apartment but from Twitter.

1. To bear or not bear arms

 

As my niece in Kyiv

is being shelled

I write poems

based on her words*

and what I see

on our TV.

 

I hold my Siamese

the way I imagine

her holding hers.

It seems odd to me

with the repressed

memories I held

 

for over 80 years

but that's all I can do

except bear arms

and join her.

I never in my life

thought I'd say

 

Damn Russia.

 

2. Fugitive security*

A poem based on the words of Alex Nodopaka’s niece in Kyiv.

 

The daily shaking of the 5th

floor of the building

where I live frightens me.

 

Nightly I put down

a few blankets on the floor

of my bathroom.

 

The only place that offers

a false sense of security.

Wedging my head

 

between the toilet

and the wall for protection

I try to sleep

 

despite the rumbling

keeping me awake.

 

Alex Nodopaka originated immaculately in Ukraine in 1940. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & un poquo de Madridista. He sings in tongues after Vodka, has studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author and visual artist in USA.

I IMAGINE FIRST LEAVING THE HOSPITAL

by Ying Wu

A wounded 6-year-old girl arrived at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday. Her mother wept outside the ambulance. Her father was at her side, covered in blood. The family was at a supermarket on the outskirts of the southeastern port city when Russian shelling started, according to the Associated Press. Now, a medical team was racing to save the young girl's life. "Take her out! Take her out! We can make it!" a hospital worker shouted. They placed her onto a gurney and wheeled her inside, where doctors and nurses fought to revive her. But she could not be saved. A doctor who was pumping oxygen into her looked into the camera of an Associated Press videojournalist in the room. "Show this to Putin," he said. "The eyes of this child, and crying doctors." Photo credit: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP —CNN, February 28, 2022

You step on the sidewalk.

 

Life breaks into pieces.

 

There are segments and thresholds.

 

Your child collapsed

when the missile exploded.

 

Your heel strikes the pavement.

 

Her body is there at the hospital, still—

but now, you’re outside.

 

Life crosses thresholds.

 

When your child was born,

you tasted forever.

 

But the sidewalk is sectioned.

Today, all the sections seem smaller.

 

Life is unknown.

It breaks into pieces—

 

and the space between heel strikes

can swallow you whole.

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art San Diego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, Poetry Pacific, and The New Verse News.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay.