nbsp;

Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

Watering the lawn,
beneath the azure awning,
a plane passes by.

Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

There isn’t any rain,
though gray clouds cover the sky.
The news drips and drips.

“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a poet of Japanese poetic forms.

~~~

Newsreel:
Navalny says that Twitter’s wrong to censor Trump’s account,
when daily death threats come to him; on Twitter they’re allowed
AMLO, the President of Mexico likewise believes
that Twitter should not censor Trump, nor Facebook make him leave.
They’re acting like the “Inquisition” forcing him to go.
Is there more freedom found in Russia and old Mexico?
Angela Merkel said so too, the head of Germany:
freedom of speech should not be breached by techno-tyranny
And Elon Musk, the richest man now in America
calls Silicon elites an unelected censor band.
Beware all people, working men and working women oo.
Wall Street, Big Banks, G-Mafiat; they all are after you.
This is the torch and pitchfork seen in Shelley’s “ Frankenstein”;
O, how they want destruction of the independent mind!

Because of Twitter’s ban of Trump, say Hong Kong’s democrats.
they’re changing avatars to show support for Donald Trump.
They love him for his willingness to fight the CCP;
they also hate all censorship; they hate tech-tyranny.
Unhappy they let CCP attack them near and far,
Hong-Kongers choose Trump’s pics to be their Twitter avatars.

~~~

Hong Kong Virologist Banned
by Lu “Reed ABCs{ Wei

What Doctor Li-Meng Yan has said, the people should not hear,
so Twitter has closed her account and made her disappear.
She did not have that much to say—that Chinese refugee—
she only said what others have to varying degree.
She says the Wuhan virus, in a bio lab, was made,
no more than what so many other scientists have said.
But she goes on, suggesting it was purposefully sent
out to the World, which could be; but is it evident?
Who thinks the CCP would ever manufacture such?
But luckily, the Twitter censors have this statement crushed.

Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei is a poet of China.

~~~

Uganda Ban
by Dicase Lebweru

The Twitter public policy department tweeted out
their opposition to Uganda’s efforts to shut down,
for their election coming, access to the Internet,
when just last week the folks at Twitter banned the President/
Yoweri Museveni is Uganda’s President,
and he has only been in office thirty-five years yet.
Perhaps he doesn’t want the Twitterites to stop his steal,
and learned from them just how to do it rather recently,
just like Americans are learning slowly how to be
themselves caught in an ossifying techno-tyranny.

Dicase Lebweru is a poet of East Africa. Uganda is a nation of about 40,000,000. Twitter does not ban the Chinese Communist Party, though the CCP bans Twitter.

~~~

The Censorers
by Caud Sewer Bile
“Hey, Bro, Big Sibling is watching you.”
—Eric Awesud Ble

So viciously they censor various Americans,
those souls whose views they do not like, in utter arrogance.
Just like the CCP does, they are disappearing folks,
they tear them down, they turn them out, they even steal votes.
Just like the German Nazis they are persecuting views;
conservatives must be destroyed, they are the modern Jews.
A dread disease, they spread with ease, like cancer colonists.
they smote, they hate, they don’t debate; these neoStalinists.
The only thing they know is No! They censor and dismiss.
O, rise on lies Progressives, Democrats and Socialists!

Caud Sewer Bile is a poet of what news there is.

~~~

The Words of Osip Mandelstam
by Alecsei Burdeew

I do not want to read the words of Osip Mandelstam—
their silence deafening—and yet…il y avait un homme.
Beset by techno-tyrants, censoring in the extreme,
who else but Osip Mandelstam is there for me to read
Who in this Google Archipelago is there to read
to help me comprehend this sordid, horrid tyranny?
George Orwell and Franz Kafka wrote about such suffering,
but Osip Mandelstam lived it through quiet uttering.
Like lifeless stone, he heard the empty, voiceless tristia
of dying in obscurity in muted muttering.

nbsp;

Varlam Shalamov
by Alecsei Burdeew
“Better the Devil than Lenin.”
—newspaper salesman in Ivan Bunin’s “Cursed Days”

Born in Vologda of a family of priests, he was
an atheist at thirteen, and then next a communist.
It was the heyday of th’ October Revolution when
he went to school and graduated from gymnasium.
He found a job as tanner at a leather factory;
then later studied law at Moscow University
In 1929, while in a Trotsky-leaning group,
he was arrested and imprisoned; as his thoughts weren’t pure,
for three long years in Berezniki, in the Perm Oblast,
forced labour at the local chemical construction plant.
At the outset of the Great Purge, he was locked up anew,
and sent to the land of white death till 1942.
In 1943, he got a ten-year-sentence term
for calling Ivan Bunin’s poems classic—On that he stayed firm!
Near death, from mining gold and coal, great statist Stalin’s foe
he was saved by the doctor in-mate A. I. Pantyukhov.
Alive by air and bread and water in Kolyma’s cough,
he dipped a sky’s crust in life’s cold stream —Varlam Shalamov.

Alecsei Burdeew is a poet of Russia. Osip Mandelstam (1892-193) and Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982) were Modernist and Postmodernist Russian poets and short story writers censored for their beliefs. “Kolyma Tales” is the major work of Varlam Shalamov. It shows the demonic horror of Stalin’s labour camps, those Xi Jinping is trying to model in China. Modernist Russian poet and prose writer Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) fled the Communists to live in Paris. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a German Modernist short story writer and novelist; George Orwell (1903-1950) was a British Modernist essayist and novelist.

~~~

Dressed in Black
by Wilude Scabere

No, I am not Prince Hamlet, though I be all dressed in black,
though I wear clothes of woe, from top to bottom, front to nack.
Though something’s rotten to the core, in this land where I am,
this is not Denmark where I live, this is America.
Although our leader may have won his place illegally,
he is not Claudius, nor does he act as regally.
Though madness runs through those who run the present government,
it’s more from sheer dishonesty, corrupt and ill intent.
Although within the Capitol one may find pageantry,
alas, poor land, this is no play, though ‘t be a tragedy.

Wilude Scabere is a poet of England.

~~~

Newsreel:
Half of a million people came to Washington DC,
protesting an election that they thought rigged and unfree;
but some of them broke through into the nation’s Capitol,
like summer’s violent protesters way out of control.
On Sunday antifascist storm troops marched in NYC,
They chanted out aloud, “These are our motherfuckin’ streets.”
A snap impeachment was begun in Washington DC,
thus quelling speech about the President’s cry, “Stop the steal!”
Upon Epiphany there were two insights two groups saw,
one saw a madman and his followers were crazed and raw;
the other saw a nation ruined without rule of law
and both believed the other group would truly ruin all.

~~~

The Harpies of the Land
by E. Birdcaws Eule

I sing of hatred, mania, that rages cross the land.
The harpies of unsocial media want people banned.
They scream, they shout, they have no doubt, that what they could not be wrong,
and you must hear them as they screech each harsh, detesting song.
They howl, like wild coyotes, and they shriek like cawing crows;
they keep their shrill, unseemly words cranked up in constant flows.
They spew offensive tirades from their mouths diurnally.
They love the sound of their mass voice: “Hear us eternally.”
But millions of their listeners avoid their constant cant,
and hate to hear them when they shriek, avoid them when they can.

E. Birdcaws Eule is a poet of shrill birdlike shrieks.

~~~

In Quiet Contemplation
by Sri Wele Cebuda

He got into the lotus pose; he spread his legs out wide;
but still he wore athletic shoes and socks which were quite bright.
He opened up his inner eye; he raised his head up high.
He longed to reach nirvana, as he sought to kiss the sky.
He felt uplifted from the floor. He flung the door aside.
He longed to take an awesome ride upon a flowing tide.
He felt like as a conduit there balanced at time’s edge.
He felt a surge of energy. He felt a jarring jet.
Anticipating new insight, he felt so warm inside;
although life’s storm was all around, he took it all in…stride/

Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet of meditation.

nbsp;