01 #
Consecrated Flames
Greg McVerry / Poetry
Ukraine Poetry Collection
Poems on freedom, memory, resistance, and the people of Ukraine.
Small Poems · My poetry · Original collection on X ↗
About this collection
Text and image versions of each poem are presented together. Dates describe the collection, not individual poems. Text spacing and image versions are retained.
02 #
Water Lynx
03 #
Wild Fields
Listen to sand along our banks
and hear us sing. Portraits of women
of Wild Fields whose winds carry anthems of our Steppes
Slaves once harmonized tears of
The Ruin
Coalescing in Cacophonies
of currents flowing along our river's edge
Our songs still get sung
Green Armies fade to White
and Synagogues fell silent
Yet our song still gets sung
over sunsets slipping past
cattle yards and ship builders
Watermelons smiling as metronomes passing time
in heights of Saldo's embezzling of Gogol's Souls who hide
the delight of Eagle Werewolves gathering
Yet among the Safari our songs still get sung
a doll, spotted in mold and decay, a single eye staring into the sky floats on death carried by Kakhova's demise
Yet Portraits of women still sing
Children of Wild Fields, never voiceless
Our chorus always clamorous,
held in the soil of our shire
calls for freedom waken
Kherson's Liberation
04 #
Falcons of Polissia
Piercing eyes
singing dirges
in ashes of
Batu Kahn's flame
as fire wings
spread over a
young Capital
forsaken in caves
while laboratories of
long knives fell
to Eastern Shadows.
But heroes Unfurl
over ancient forests
of four rivers and
Malar stripes
glisten with fierce
precision
and rusty hues
drip with the blood
shed in battle.
Valor and Sacrifice
glisten in silver talons
cast upon Golden feathers
singing heraldic marches of
advancing armor
of the falcons of Polissia
05 #
Siren’s Call
Answer Siren's Call
as Soundsystems awaken
a sullen soul
Jahlovemusik must meet
fire proof freedoms
among tattered brick factories,
haunted memories lost in walls
A wail of Lady of Theotokos calling
Twelve Tribes of Israel who dine on Pashcha's Twevle Feasts
Cloaks of birds unleashed wings
in sub tuum prasedium poses
Our Sister spills
with Confidence, a
relentless drum and bass,
Prayers of Pokrova and moving feet
to off-beat rhythms
and staccato chords
singing once more, once more
in honor of a Defenders lore
06 #
No Serf No Slave
07 #
Dobrobipillia
08 #
Green Fella
Amber sparks
dragged atop a
cat's back
in chromium splashes
of call backs
while tribbles draped
in Tubas drop
an ass hammer
with confidence of
chlorophyll filled fields
in Pontic Steppes
dancing in dreams caught
between Cyan scenes and
Yellow queens with the means
to Parp in fella sheens
along Gaelic Shores to
Paradise flights
Look at our peaches jiggle and dance
Pineapple on Pizza is better than in your pants
fruit when it yields at ripening. Indeed signs for a people who believe by bending
wavelengths of perception
in mystical conception of luminescent warnings dripping
from DaVinci's brush of
Barium Salts coloring skies
and our beauty's eyes an illusion to our collective diffusion of vivid costumes who loom in loafers of love
Forged of steal and iron Docs
Fired the green tree, fire, and then from it you ignite.
A lovely little site, our green machine
ready to give all for free Ukraine
09 #
August Winds
August Winds
carrying indifferent
sins cast
upon New fronts
in Gerasimov's Folly
and Mavic Vollies
sing into Sumy
skies, as a world
begiNs to realize
lies of invincibility
Peace we must hold
as untold minions spill
in under a rising sun
Peace, a gift, is warrior given
for it to be ours
for if it is not
the Peace is lost
10 #
Gazetteer of Gonzo
Gazetteer of Gonzo
Desire, and potty mouth
of fire
They tell me you are wicked,
and I'm like y'all bitches don't know
Fierce as a brain damaged dog,
tongue lapping for action, cunning
savage bonking vatniks
Never a Princess
whose been less
with a bonk stick skill set
yet when laughter of youth
shed, an apeture of peace we all carry
in sunsets cast along
Denmark's shores
11 #
Highland Fella
Front post
double trouble
Fella
that
split stiches
a reality bent
on hooks
and loops
looks and
groups who
scoop yarns
of history wrapped
in arms of Defenders
Highland Lady
shaking the shady
by swinging
Fuzzy Nutz
12 #
Goosewinged Growth
Head and weather helm
in trust complete
confide our miseries to the
wind and tack victories to
broad reach of histories
setting sails to luff
Trust floats on mistrust
a closed haul, pulled tight
in the inferiority of industry teetering
in irons
Integrity of sails unfold
in unity of Goosewinged Growth
and sunshine spills at Spinnaker speeds
Do. Move. Act
For no Broad wind
sends one jibbing in when
one makes your people and things
Fidelity of the the seas
Frees an identity crisis
as waves make your course
count upon borrowed breezes
13 #
Azovstal
Cossack
fields
of Kalmuis
sing in Iron
and steel
While Zeal
of French Priests
and Facebook flings
ring in horrors
of flight
and fancy
Vanity of
Bodegas and Bonfires
Oceans away
twisting blades in
Defenestration of Ancient
truths
14 #
As Gogol
As Gogol
Guzzles
gold of sold
arguments
young hang
from
gallows
swinging on
guilt
of
an aged
gilded
who dine with
Ghosts when
God gets past
unlatched gates
of felled
ideas
forgotten
15 #
we collect cross-stitched
we collect cross-stitched
senses of self as
Poetry unfolds patterns
anomalies commonly
dawn on we
only when they see
wisp lines of truth
from benign even
weave in Needle minders
of time
written
in wings of a moth
made of aida cloth
Basting in banality
In a finality of moments
that break with reality
form and function
two rings who fit
meaning
playing at schemes of
morality
anomalies an allowance
Seams cutting at edge
of normality
Poetry is the prick of
history
16 #
Who fund these
Who fund these
digital assassins
bonking with mystical
passion?
Myths of
whimiscal trysts to
brick predictable
tricks
of war criminals
who misshapen
is fashioned
as NAFO
unfastens
the lies
dragging
miseries of
histories for
these more equal
piggies honk our conch
as they damn well please
Bringing enemies to
their knees
NAFO bonks hard
and our kisses taste like
your mom
17 #
A global horde of
A global horde of
memetic Methodius
seeding Cyril's florettes
of freedom
on phonemes of the absurd.
Each barb carrying
a spark of Olah's
seed
seeking
Accursed nonsense, insatiate
A perfidous serpent
crucifying sense
sliced by Kosynsky's Klowns
and on both banks
truth and freedom flow
18 #
Unheard savagery
Unheard savagery
Glares from history’s
silver laced eyes
Pointed to
Hollowed skies
Painted by tyrants who see
babes but vessels
To torture in vassal states
And rip Peace
Bank to bank
Sirens wail,
Sounds drill in bits turning on echos
Of shattered pasts.
Ripping
Into ears as
Silver sleeves
Streak across shrouded
Clouds and torture now
Descends from heavens
above
Repeated history whips
Butchering facts in relentless
Attacks on veins running deep
In partitioned bodies of
Children and Nations
Promises of forked tongues
Deliver silver drenched
Sons and a
Nation undone
Until Brave Act
Carve
Ultimus pacta
Carried on backs of loved
Ones
Raskol’ini
nasha nalsyia
No Pacta
Et conditones
Just victory for
the fallen
And a call for
Children to come
Home.
19 #
Fellas
Fellas
develop
medicinal plates
of ceramic pfp
enhancements to allow
minimal enchantments
of liminal
distate
in fates of info
spaces dripped
in
subliminal
hymnals
sung in
criminal
tongues through
imbecile debates
of truncated
principles
Ostinatos of
emaciated
play dough
reshaped
to rape, and reap
hate
in disinfo spaces
disgraces in
cadence
nested in
cradle of
tonality
serving
festering ladles
dripping in pronounced
nonsense
sipping on the
soup of my enemy
20 #
Mathematical fools
Mathematical fools
Not to assume
Renisannce Tools
maybe but a prism
of Berezovsky's jewels
For it is unmathematical
for mathematics to stay
unreplicable
through unforeseen
strings of regression to the
mean
When returns seem
laudable, almost
unplausible
a causable catalyst
maybe be Blat met
the Capitalist
for a company of
mathematicians
to always outperform
competition is unmathematical
market forces, that
courses through the Heritage
of such Foundations
21 #
semiotics of
semiotics of
kicking signs
to the Greek
and Locke and
leaving indigenous
semiotics and symbols
unsought
left
off the clock
symptomatology
of measuring blocks
rocks of gray matter
in Bell curve splatters
meaning is kinda fleeting
Hella rude to leave it up
to Dead White Dudes
As forces
cast spells
atop of
semiospheres
to spread
bubbles of fear
pushing dopamine
and cortisol
portals of lies
through refactored
eyes
narrative boundary
of understanding
derived in
biological. Are we but
surplus value of code?
Piercing de Saussure
plowshare of authors
tug on metaphor
which Lakov roots
in Chekov's metaphors
and Alice's endless doors
Derrida cried
Signifier and signified,
Fishing in triadic views
that allow outside
to skew the pews
of neatly packed ideas
in Churches of the mind
More Us
echoes
in Semiological
Guerrilla Warfare
flare
as Angry
Place
Faith in Fakes.
interpretive
Slate of
a Rose by
any name
so Azov with
the clothes off
painted in
fake shames
of Pink Nazis
in shades of
deep state
blues For
Traditions can't
flirt with Frankfurt
get a clue
22 #
Twist around Interstices
Twist around Interstices
that fold between
spaces
to spot patterns
existing since
provenance
For a fallen Wolf
Echoes of
Broken ripples,
circles splayed.
Collapsing in on
time, songs of
fallen
Crest back into
future reflections in
A Hero's
Shadow casting
umbras of light
Dancing on lips dipped in
tales once
Whispers of valor
Now Tidal Forces
In cacophonies
Of the Free
23 #
Sasha
Sasha
felt need to speak
turning to you with anxiety
about
mass media
warned you rightist
forces will not easily give up
Restore order in
mass media.
Literární listy, Mlada fronta, Reporter, Prace
every day
publishing
anti-Soviet and
anti- party articles
24 #
what does it
what does it
mean to meme
meaning of
utterances in a
sputtering of
nonludic
discourses dancing
in
abhorrent metaphors
of mixed meaning
seeing concrete, pragmatic
effects of
taking a brick to the
dome?
25 #
What is a
What is a
N
A
F
O
?
Fellas be
Tipsy
Topsy
eurytopy
stenotopic
Bonkers.
26 #
Adapted to
Adapted to
Brick a
Cyclic Disturbance,
an abundance of
nonsense,
successions
of projections in
epidemics
of Vatnik
Pronunciation.
27 #
Some hold no
Some hold no
pens
gravity
pulls weights
of meaning, beyond
standard of
ink, Well of
words defying
boundaries, waves
of allusion crafting
new constraints
in war torn histories.
painting miseries with
meaning
Allowing hope
to crack despondent
darkness
That's Victoria
28 #
Inconvenient Existence
Inconvenient Existence
chasing a false
brilliance in face of
persistent resistance
to spews of
incomprehensible
evidence cast
at distant audiences.
A subsistence on nonsense
in hope of another
remittance. A Pittance for pestilence
at Providence of
Incompetence
29 #
I do not know
I do not know
in spin networks
of memes
where
Loop quantum gravity
marks a fold of
Space-time
origins of beginning
as a container of
counting towards an end
is two
or two more
and moar too
30 #
We dance
We dance
in steps more
than signifier and
sign.
Fires and sickles
in bifurcated
illustrations
by forsaken
exploration of
tattered
brushes, bristles
cracked and
hardened
more scores of
scars on canvas
fanning splashes
of dry reality
31 #
For KTARD
For KTARD
Art
picks
at surface
scratches
scabs of pains
interface.
human
condition
encased
in shades of meanings
broken
cracked oil pastels and
charcoal shaving pushed
to the floor
burying scars deeper
without believing in a
beauty you just
captured
32 #
On shores
On shores
of ancient
rivers, rise
banks
of humanity
now swallowed
Bosmina once gatheres
at Barriers of Barbaric
Design
Scars thrice
ripped open
Ancient trails
extolled by Stabo
and paths transversed
by Pliny the Younger
Gone
Now torrents of misery
wrought by monsters
as immovable walls
reflect an evil
so deep
Gentle sloping fields
used to sing to wide valleys
songs carried by Greylong Geese til
sun fades on whistles of Night Herons
Now voices washed
away
but our
soul still flies
In cosmic knowledge
politics
means anything
but a forgiven
sin as
laws of
ascent
do not descend
from a March on
Rome.
Nor slip off lips
of technologists
tweaking words
at world's abyss
Divine does not sink
on an
empirical existence
or evil
only begins
when one
grasps
a weighted folly
nature, God, and
self part and parcel
to a lost essence
in Hegel's Waiting Room
hoping to hold THE Rose in
place
et fated
in concrete
seal
nothing
more
than a rabid
dog descending on
Human nakedness
too diseased to see their
demise
as our only
cure.
33 #
Scripts drip
Scripts drip
in accidental
plays
as
pages soaked
in blood and soil
turn, a
third
theater
burns,
and the children
cry
a 2-bit
critic, with
reflexive twists;
dark doing in light
what
light only does
in dark
when curtains
burn
and the
children
cry
death
told in
discourses of
corrective
masculine.
measures and
acts in tongues of
nihilistic
danger
of deconstruction
of a Nation's
story
told in dominant
voices, forgotten
who will hear us,
indeed?
spotlights fade
and the
children
cry
and when cast and crew
pooled amongst fools
Crazy Eights in
14 words bound to
happen
and the
children
cry
By the third
act
relevance done
and now the gun
points at you
(and the
children
smile)
34 #
bourgeois ideologists
bourgeois ideologists
who
dine on
bacon fat
of Marx's
Paradox
sail two
harbors of
inevitable
possibilities
bouncing on
waves
of
proletariat
subjectivity
in tides pulling
contradictions
of grift
as science
says alienation
must get worse,
an immiseration
of modern
Pixels and
proposals
dance between
probable,
improbable
toes
skipping
scales
tipping
norms of science
and stolen
appliances
oscillating between
phenomenons of
interesting
messaging awash
in improbability
I
wonder
if one measures
the improbability
of wonder has
one wandered
in error into
probabilities
of impossible
measures in
one type or
another
moments of
atonement
in Pagan casts
of Roman
villains of
modernity
as Pilgrims bore
you by tick in our bosses
time clock
hands buttery
in Bougie Biscuits on
Brodway
takes of the industrious
risk yet clipped
to a phone
call of unfinished
futures
incompatible
moments to
contradict divergent
truths
of markets of
Brokered Identities in
Broken reflections
cast on shards
of total
transformation
35 #
seeking
seeking
functionalist
junction of
modern
cogs on wheels
on cogs in
systems in
systems in
cogs on wheels
on cogs
modern
of
junction
Functionalist
seeking
he
forgotten
Spencer of not,
knotted
in a Principled
Life, draped in an
outfit for survival
in tongue
twisted
evolution of
liars
who desire to
clip identities in
a unifying
bind, of oops
sorry had to
leave you
behind
your truth
did not
fit
mine
Rats
sell us
living space
rented in
bio engineered
realities of minds who
mind that mine gets
defined
by force of
expansion as
States above us
promulgate symbols
and symptoms
among us
so sus
Modernity
burps
as Bendix's
Appendices
Burst, in
natural
extended
pressures of
faculties
left undeveloped
an invisible hand
at right of the
almighty
commercialization
when my own
thoughts are
not
in
harmony as
celebrated serfs
who toil in Jungles of
Chi-town
Distrust dips
into dialectical
dances and
claims
We
must drain
it all for
development
as reactionay
forces drill
holes in buckets,
to duck
modernity's
toil
and blame someone
else for soaked
soil
Discourses
of interpretivism
cast modernity
as an approaching
calamity, an evil
cast in light, and
must save us from
instrumental
rationality
in praxis
of truth
lost in
consensus
of continuous
redefining
realities
around me
Post modern
fools
with tools
of deconstruction
requires
thrusts at
corrections
in desire Nihilistic
critical stances and who knows
whats in their pantses
bind our time and place
to chronotope
prisons seen through
western forced
prisms shatter other
worldings
on the farm
all pigs
are equal
as all classes
toil
clocks
clicking
to noises
of sunrise
earth is our
fertility
and makes fruit
ripen while
vines of modern
producers
no longer, as in the fields,
a sovereign and free father of a family, no alphas
in Modern Family
36 #
Two songs
Two songs
sung
Sons drowned
in silver
tongues
and
Princes
undone
A bow,
Now,
to
tyranny
no wave
washes
such bite
of broken
promises
until jaws of
time
ripped
fang-less in
our
future
As Gogol
Guzzles
gold of sold
arguments
young hang
from
gallows
swinging on
guilt
of
an aged
gilded
who dine with
Ghosts when
God gets past
unlatched gates
of felled
ideas
forgotten
37 #
Viscous
Viscous
Biscuits
Of our
Brains
Often
Cant handle
Mandibles
Of facts
That extract
Truths
Regurgitated,
evaporated
From swirls
In nectar
That dance in false
colors
All around.
So some get fated to
Exasperated flapping
To keep colonies from
Collapsing
By cooling combs
And tomes of
energy
Immune to enemies
Who douse
Langstroth houses
In mistruths
Spewed from
Louses
To protect
A honey
As We.
Content
among flowers
that surround.
38 #
A broken Birch
A broken Birch
branch
scoured in tooth
spurge shadows
cast
dancing
dirges of besmirched
towers
Canopy snapping fingers in
rhythms that linger,
Yet
we do not hear
on verge of surging
into submerging folds
of deciduous matter
But
for now suspended
in broken
reality
39 #
Shattered
Shattered
signals
dangle in eerie
peace found
only in erasure
when life
fought out of
existence
for only wires
dance now
dangling
moving gently
in winter's breeze
tossing shadows on
cast iron
fence bent
fingers
scraping
humanity's
garden
overgrown
with shrapnel
and rebar
iodizing vines
festering atop
cinder blocks
and glass
of empty boxes
blown out
windows
to look upon
a courtyard crushed
Yet
the Oak
where the children play
It still stands
40 #
to hedge
to hedge
a bet
at precipice
of humanity
despots pour
porridge of
insanity
which
alleges
knowledge at
ledges and
wedges
that dredge
the lowest
common
denominator
Sludge drudged
for haters
and splainers
The loons who
swoon
over
Buffoons
and goons
Yet
do not judge
nor condemn
who holds
the spoon
for it is the Chef
who deftly poisons
truth as a hedge
against reality
So They Danced
So they danced to rhythm
held in cadence by incessant chatter of air raid sirens keeping time in shadows of collapsing buildings raising a finger to a sun not setting in dreams who can no longer sing to Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
So they danced to baroque violins marching along fifty operas belting in four seasons to children lost under Eastern shadows
So they danced in Kharkiv, Kherson, and Kupiansk.
A Defender half step in Donetsk spitting dozens against a veiled goose step dripping from rising light in broken skies screaming with a devil's rage painted on bristles dipped into a palate of tyranny
Tallest leaves atop a hollowed out tree, umbras drip from heartless cavities wrapped in falling bark, but the leaf still drinks, fingers touching sun above fields where thorny devils, small spiny lizards lurk, worming through soil
So they danced on banks of the Siverskyi Donets, busy bodies of Kramatorsk doing a Dougie of Defenders dreams
Hulking mighty stings through the night, witness to the martyrs of misery
Is this not our Paradise Lost, broken but a beat remains?
riding backwards down a number line in memories of collective language forgotten, a doll, one eye missing, hanging tired in a listless hand of a soot covered child
darkened by the coal deep beneath her feet and the terrors falling above. No fear for them, nor will they grieve, but grace and bounty still denied
So they danced
Can we not see the beauty in the time of death and loss? Not of a candles burning, but of wicks untouched by a fiery embrace of true solemn purpose
No one can take your dance away for the heavens know
Moscow will fall through Crimea
The Gods, old and new know.
A song is also a weapon. A dance, poetic verse to joy and struggle
We say thank you out loud without speaking these terms. Only through movement can you find the understanding brought by
pomegranates growing as a mind bathes in a cast iron tub, lavender and sage, strewn from a blown out buildings
So they danced
to the cost of Karpivka's liberation. Feet who could not patter so other could still sing. Still Dance, Still breath in Freedom's clutch, a purse held tightly to the chest
Can heaven not arise without hell's revival
carried in backslides of a bankhead bounce
torments of angels who know the beauty must arise from the abyss
a deep strike in a phantom's cold embrace turning Samara fields into darken columns of a Defenders hope
So they danced to silver doused split tongues on Princes stolen on lighting of a Kalishnikovs loitering in the sky
only to see raspberry driven rage seep deep into landscapes littered in tatters of imperial dreams
and a stray dog walks by, tail wagging oblivious to our fractured world. And in that moment we know
We must keep this dance moving
