Pandemic Poems
Seasons of evil - number 19
by Steve Solodoff
It once again has begun.
Upon me fully, all at once, without warning.
Though I should have known,
I should have been ready.
It happens again;
at the same time,
in the same way,
with the same sickening dread.
But I fear this year, this season,
......
Coping With Covid
by Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar
Caught between Covid teeth
Some fall down;
Some with guts and zeal
Usually stand up.
Among all who exist and rise
Only the fittest survive.
History smiles on paper
As mankind is known for eons
By its immune power—
......
Poverty as a Pandemic Pain
by Ololade Raji
Life in the hood means nothing without a livelihood as those in the hood will choose livelihoods over lives. Maybe you now know why the frenzy virus feeds on your lives through the hunger of those in the hood
But if you fear the virus and still value your life above your livelihood, then, you are not in the hood. And you better not leave those in the hood to leave the hood for food and the virus
For it is good to move their food to the hood so they remain in the hood, then, you would not need to brood over their covid moves to leave their hood
I hope you know the gloom that looms if you do not give a hoot and look beyond loots. Have I just told you how to woo those in the hood with food to stay at home?
If you do not believe that you need food to ease the pandemic pains in the hood, you would neither believe in the corona dirge for a sweet aunt nor a word from this howl
......
Pandemic March 2020
by Michele Bandler
I don’t know what day it is anymore
And time no longer matters
Modern life as I’ve known it,
Is on hold.
Beliefs I’d long held, are turned upside down.
“Virtual communication – cell phones ----are isolating us,”
I’d said. “Get out of your house, join a group, meet face to face” I’d said.
Now, technology is all that we have to connect, since we
Cannot get out, join a group, or meet face to face.
......
The Sound of Silence
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Splashing down liquid voices,
a troubled peace of silence enveloped
the fragile land.
Here comes Queen Lockdown with her septic flowers.
The church bells chime mutely,
with refined silence and hypnotic horror.
Funerals and weddings merged like companies,
Counting on numbers frugally.
......
The Sound of Silence
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Splashing down liquid voices,
a troubled peace of silence enveloped
the fragile land.
Here comes Queen Lockdown with her septic flowers.
The church bells chime mutely,
with refined silence and hypnotic horror.
Funerals and weddings merged like companies,
Counting on numbers frugally.
......
Seasons of evil - number 19
by Steve Solodoff
It once again has begun.
Upon me fully, all at once, without warning.
Though I should have known,
I should have been ready.
It happens again;
at the same time,
in the same way,
with the same sickening dread.
But I fear this year, this season,
......
Pandemic March 2020
by Michele Bandler
I don’t know what day it is anymore
And time no longer matters
Modern life as I’ve known it,
Is on hold.
Beliefs I’d long held, are turned upside down.
“Virtual communication – cell phones ----are isolating us,”
I’d said. “Get out of your house, join a group, meet face to face” I’d said.
Now, technology is all that we have to connect, since we
Cannot get out, join a group, or meet face to face.
......
The drowned city
by Chris Quinn
As I walk to the office, through a city made strange by emptiness
The skies over Merrion Square roil like moody surf
And, for a moment, a vision fills my eyes
A city drowned beneath the waves, with neither gravity nor bustle
A discarded face mask caught in the silent tidal rhythm floats by
Waters not of the salt of biblical ire but wrought of carelessness
And yet, In the desert of the real
The furore of noise and faces has become amniotic and tranquil
......
Satori
by Chris Quinn
Drinking a cup of tea in my overgrown back garden
Watching flocks of birds make complex shapes in the air
The wind through the tall grass whispered to me
A riddle of unity, described and known but never understood in logic
I who am matter, am I different from clay?
I’ll be clay again soon enough
I can live only in the present, looking out at past and future
fated to never set foot in the same river twice except…
except the one I cannot avoid
the river of time , the river of forgetting and remembering
......
