Pandemic Poems
Lamentations of A Free Inmate
by Ololade Raji
It was indeed a long night, as many tossed and turned in a dreamless void. Yet, for the fifth moon in the year of the virus, I would rather remain locked down
Lest you shed my piteous fate another tear, know my lot in life is a little better than the isolated souls in stealthy battle with death. And of those quarantined only to the tiny quotas for the breath of life, but who would rather trade in such direness for an instant demise
It is any and every soul in this oubliette who has been locked up but with doors ajar. Seers say with the bliss of a century comes agonies in an annual crisis of pains. Yet, mortality in these days of May may be more than those in prior months of His unmerited mercies
Let those who still long for the new decade’s daydreams now appreciate the post-pandemic possibilities of a new norm and...
Let those who eventually live to tell the tale, share with generations the wrath of the minutely unseen, for this dreary night of nightmares is utterly devoid of a wink of deep sleep
......
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—
......
The Time of Terror
by Japman Aneja
I saw the sun rise from beneath the ground,
And bring a time of sunshine and cheer around,
When children played around and the nature danced to its own beat,
When birds sung their melodies and butterflies came to greet,
But this joy soon faded away and the fun seemed to cease,
When the clouds stormed over and the rain destroyed the nature’s peace,
The children stopped playing and nature showed its rage,
The sky growled, the thunder rumbled and everyone returned to their cage,
......
Hum Dekhte
by Thanshu Guliani
Hum bhi agar panchi hote to aakash dekhte
Saari duniya so rahi hoti magar hum prakash dekhte
Mausam jo bhi hota, par apni chah me aksar
Hum apne pankh khol dete aur log humari udaan dekhte
Hum makan dekhte
Hum, makan dekhte
jinme kitni aankhe taras rahi hai udne ko
jahan in cheekhon ka naam nahi hai rukne ko
......
Broken or Mended
by Pallavi Surana
Broken things, Mended pencils.
Strings with knots;
Thoughts with confusion.
Lately, all of this has been liberating.
To have experienced the process,
to have traversed the path!
To have finally accepted,
That, when life expires, all that matters is the "Journey"!
......
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
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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
......
