🌞   🌛
John Arthur Nichol

  • The abyss of humanity’s dregs
    Huddles, clutching his Fabergé eggs;
    With drones over Novo
    O-No!-garyovo,
    He’s fallen a number of pegs.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • Putin’s building a bunker aroun’ them,
    The wealthiest Muskovites - noun them
    Expletively. Slam!
    Now we just need a dam
    Overflowing, to flood it and drown them.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • Putin nervously paces at home, But his aircraft remain on the drome,
    For a rogue Russian jet,
    He imagines, may yet,
    Do a Belgorod right on his dome.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • To let the aggressor retain
    Any part of the land of Ukraine
    Would leave people behind,
    Of Ukrainian mind,
    To be tortured, imprisoned and slain.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • It’s FSB witch-hunting season -
    Denounce, cause you don’t need a reason;
    You’ll earn a promotion
    And show your devotion
    By charging your elders with treason.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • The Soviet Union has fled
    The Security Council; it’s dead.
    Ukraine asks, unanswered,
    Why Russia the Rancid
    Now sits at the table instead.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • So little force left, should they spend it?
    And where, if they do, should they send it?
    There’s growing disorder
    On Belgorod’s border,
    And Russia’s unable to end it.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • In Russia, so much is taboo …
    If you want to stay out of the poo,
    Tell your kids not to draw,
    Never mention the war,
    And you mustn’t wear yellow and blue.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • The Russians, unquestioning, did
    What their psychopath president bid:
    Blew in at full throttle,
    Like flies in a bottle,
    And never considered the lid.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • These aerial unmanned incursions,
    And mystery border insertions,
    Force Russia’s unending
    Reality bending
    To greater and greater exertions.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • When a place people live is attacked,
    Putin says: ‘That’s a terrorist act.'
    We can only agree,
    And we’re happy to see
    He’s accepted the label, in fact.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • It’s Summer, and bound to engender
    Mixed thoughts in the Russian defender;
    As the steppe comes alive,
    Many choose to survive,
    And they’re crossing the lines to surrender.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • The Russians are busy inflating
    Their feathers, all talk and berating,
    Their boots on the ground
    Left to wander around
    In a fog of confusion and waiting.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • The war has developed a way now,
    Where it’s visiting Russia each day now,
    As was never the plan
    Of the never-a-man
    Who has ever so little to say now.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • Just a little, not over-proportioned,
    Was the share of explosives apportioned
    To the drones in the night
    On their mystical flight,
    But the Russian elite have been cautioned.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • Poor dictator, waking in fright,
    To explosions and flickering light;
    There’s a cry of dismay
    Where the indolent play,
    And no rest for the wicked this night.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • A mysterious drone fleet attacks
    Part of Moscow that generally lacks
    Any cause for concern
    Or incentive to learn
    What they’d see if they looked through the cracks.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • The Wedding Flight

    Five snow white doves in a white cage, the bars made of painted dowel. The birds are healthy, alert and interested in their surroundings, as they wait to be released into the air as part of a wedding ceremony taking place on Long Reef Beach, Sydney. They have pink feet and coloured identification bands on their legs.

    Long Reef Beach, Sydney

  • No rules - Putin opted to waive them:
    Just get the job done, and enslave them;
    So they brought to the war
    All their darkness and more,
    And they think that a river can save them.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • Baba Yaga, an old Russian nightmare,
    Who terrifies kids in their nightwear,
    Flies above the terrain,
    In the dark, in Ukraine,
    Stalking terrified Russians who fight there.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • In Bakhmut the flanks are eroding;
    In Russia the tanks are exploding;
    Kinzhal is passé,
    The aggressor is prey,
    And the dugouts are dark with foreboding.

    🇺🇦 #Ukraine

  • The Wedding Spot

    A photo taken from inside a restaurant on a sunny day, looking across the outdoor terrace to a wedding party on the sand. Beyond lies the ocean with an exposed rock shelf, and a blue sky with banks of white cloud. The bride and groom, only just visible among attendees, stand beneath banners of white material hanging on a bamboo frame. In the foreground a woman stands at the restaurant doorway, looking out at the wedding, and diners on the terrace also watch with interest.

    Long Reef Beach, Sydney

  • Phone in lap, buds in ears, a man in the bus shelter gestures, frowns, shakes his head and his fingers, points, cajoles and argues, just as he might do over a cafe table. But of course, he’s the only one there.

  • A dark-haired woman passes by with her red walking frame and two Aldi chiller bags. She wears long grey pants, sandshoes and a chequered coat. Her face is pale and weathered.

  • A skinny, bare-footed boy with a mop of hair runs past, in long grey trousers and a lemon yellow polo shirt from school. He vaults onto a pointy bicycle stand and hangs there with his legs splayed, risking his future, then slides down to safety and runs on.