Sonnets of Everyday Experience: Two Sonnets On Our War With Russia

Two Sonnets On Our War With Russia
by John Kendall Hawkins

1. We Miss Boris Yeltsin Blues
Yikes, I keep having visions of Yeltsin dancing
like a Mandela fool, his soft snapping fingers
doing legless Russian squat work -- The Barynya! --
gin-soused, Western-friendly, “Slick Willy,” his best friend
in the world, laughing at his wit -- The Cold War’s End!;
The KGB saw an orthodoxal sinner.
Putin wept, swore -- the humiliation lingers
to this day, when proud Russian troops are advancing
to the Ukrainian border to “exercise.”
We gave them Yeltsin and maybe they gave us Trump
for seeing the world according to Forrest Gump,
choc’laty boxful and yum-fulfilling surprise.
I’m on Russian roulette life support, three clicks in,
and then I fade to black and big bang mortal sin.

2. Let the Panic Games Begin
The Russians first gave a mad world Covid-19
vaccine in August ‘20 and called it Sputnik.
The shit hit the fans of Cold War types who could glean
the meaning of Russia’s ruling fooling nutnik,
Vlad Putin, bare chested Pale Rider on horseback.
And suddenly, in her panic, America
was flooding the market with Covid vaccine gack,
driving vaxxers and MAGAs to Hysterica.
Personally, I saw trouble with the Stuxnet,
the homophonic excess bristled me jib,
firing one over the bow of the cybernet,
knowing the Yanks’ “Wasn’t me” was a fib.
Rolling pearlharbors ahead -- why not sputniks, too?
Ice Station Zebras. Open the gates of the zoo.