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Francie Lynch Apr 2020
I know death.
Incensed with all of it.
The weighty strain of darkness,
Eyes closed, stopped ears, stuffed nose.
I was petrified while the world stumbled,
My wordless mouth gapes like a maw
Needing stitches.
I lounge in a toga,
Motionless as alabaster.
I was born to die,
But not like this.
MSunspoken Apr 2020
Enemy moving in
An old friend-
Itching under the skin
Clawing away at marrow

Sleep hollows the mind
Blank of reality-
Ah, but not a sign
Of it making haste anytime soon

Isolation known and welcome
Familiar as it comes-
Although this feeling is all but seldom
Paranoia is beginning to show

Memory of this wrath
Now too real to be past tense-
slinking straight down the path
Once tread and disrupted

Growling straight out of a nightmare
Emanating throughout the room-
This hunger is constantly aware
Though it’s warning is lost to mind

Pain is quite the grounder
A reminder to keep in time-
Stand upright despite the hour
Always alert within these confines
My therapist cannot contact me-
"I'll be fine"
Silver Apr 2020
dreams in sight
stagnate
why am i falling ? ,

every time i take a step i find
myself back in this room

white walled white washed
whites of my eyes,
half asleep in the
wake of what we could be doing.

daylight hours endless night.

stay apart if we
ever want to meet again.
stay safe wherever you are, stay put to protect yourself and others
Ambika Jois Apr 2020
I hear sounds,
But I’m not a part of it.
Does listening count?
I’ve gotten to know it all bit by bit.

I see shades of spring,
Breeze still chilled.
Just a bit of warmth
The sun can fulfill.

Work hasn’t stopped
For those who’re hustling.
Come hail, shine or Covid,
Keep going, little tummies are rumbling.

Lockdown lifts,
Isolation ends.
We think we know it all,
From what heaven sends.

Little pink petals
Peel away from the source.
Lands on another’s yard,
This is nature’s course.

We grew many years,
We learned to share, serve and save,
Where nature will take us,
Depends on how we now behave.
A quarantined mind is a creator's workshop. Just because there's a lockdown doesn't stop our minds from thinking, overthinking and dramatising a feeling. Here is my next Covid related poem, holding a few thoughts that crossed my mind over a cup of Roobois tea as I soaked in some sunshine to the sounds of a strong breeze and someone's constantly turned on lawn mower.
Carlo C Gomez Jun 2020
Look closer...
the winding trail
is baked to perfection,
bearing the scars
of a caesarean section.

Only the snakes
dare travel along I-8,
one-by-one the seasons lie prone,
in heat this sun will castrate.

The burnt aspects on faces
don’t smile or frown,
they peer out as residue
to places perished in the wake of
a cityscape’s head trauma,
calling out to the heaven’s above
as they await her to rise
with wings from these ashes,
in anticipation for a day ne’er to draw nigh,
even the steady fall of acid rain
will fail to wash away such genocide.

A favorite haunt transmutes
into a ghost town,
burning into the ground
the heat seeps into the soul,
and the procession begins again
for whom the bell tolls.

Towers of steel melt
as popsicles on the pavement,
the sun’s punishment
is constantly transcendent,
the noise of sparks and hums
rattle the spine,
today’s forecast is a good chance
of saturnine.

Eerie colors at dawn
make for a spectral scenic view,
picnic lunch in the park
is categorically taboo,
the hunters of men
swoon in subjugation to this tyranny,
weather’s wrath was everyone’s destiny.

Live a little, die a little,
pretend it cannot happen,
but in the end we all windup
as peanut brittle...
Floater Apr 2020
They claim a wolf in sheep's clothing
But I was raised a fox on a hunters fence
If finding me was easy
Why then does this crowd seem so tense?

If two birds with one stone was a hit
Then the ovation is running late
What praise does six permit?
Who swapped your gloating for hate?

Forgive the misdirection
What's your greatest fear?
Please keep your social distance
Who armed the teen cashier?
Grace Apr 2020
That day quarantine started
We were supposed to meet

Instead it’s been a month
Since we’ve seen each other again

The question is...
Do you care?
The answer? Probably not.
Steve Page Apr 2020
I know it’s all-encompassing, but you know something?
it’ll pass, and we’ll move on
and we’ll try to forget the moments when we thought we could all be goners.

We’ll look forward, quote verses about new things and we’ll be assertive
and we’ll trust God for the future, post memes on our computers
and it is right that we do this with honest good humour

but let’s not waste this season by simply surviving,
simply grinning and bearing, and us hiding our crying.
Let’s not miss these moments, these weeks and months
when it's more honest to pray with tears and sobs,
asking for answers to our cries for life,
for the lives around us,
- for those who have died,

for our sanity cooped up and us barely coping,
our routine getting worn with daily repeating
without much needed hugs and with limited ways
to meet and to sing and to share our long days
with more than these same four walls

Pause

– don’t forget how this felt for you,
cos that's the way we seek his truth
and be better able to rely on him
next time our lives lose their rhyme and rhythm,

when (let’s be honest) our faith gets wonky,
and each one of us alone can be tempted to worry

and sink inside.

Let’s be honest with him and next time
our vision may be better aligned
and we’ll look to him and rather than hide,
we’ll stand that much straighter, knowing our God is so much greater,
our God is wider and higher and untold deeper
and he has this frail life in his two pierced hands that are so much bigger.

I know it's all-encompassing,
but you know something,
he is all Father,
all Creator, all Redeemer
and the all-encompassing more Grace-giver

He is the one holding it all together
and he wants to walk through this grief together

with you.

So, turn down the news,
make some space, seek his face
and let’s pray.
Reflections on the extra space I find right now
Lucy Apr 2020
“Normality” people cry
And I can’t help but ask
Why?
A slave to the wage
Already trapped in a cage
What is it about life before
That you are all grieving so much for?
The freedom of which you speak
Having to book a holiday for a ******* week

Yes I miss a warm embrace
I want him here kissing my face
Technology overload
So ***** I’ll explode
Yet somehow I know
That back to ‘normal’
Is not where I want to go

When this is over
You’ll book that holiday
And take the next flight
To some far away place
To have the same sun
On your face
Then back to your cage
A slave to the wage

This simulation was not a success
Mother Nature cries
You’re all a ******* mess
She’s given you a chance
A time to pause
To reflect
To ponder
To dream
Yet you dare not ask
What does all this mean?

Do you sit there and wait
For world leaders
To decide your fate?
Will you choose to do good?
To have compassion for those
Where isolation is all they know?
Locked away behind bars
With their trauma and their scars
Out of site
Out of mind
They’ve been left behind

When this is over
I’ll ask myself the question
What do I yearn for?
And the answer will be
As it’s always has been
Freedom
From normality
Debopriyaa Dutta Apr 2020
it seems that the only antidote to the poison of existence is to write. to write, like our forefathers did - purposeful seclusion, months of trance-like writing, like a murderer maddened by the idea of salvation - writing, with ink-stained fingers, aching joints on the same old, trusty typewriter; writing, while wallowing in the deepest pits of despair, stuck inside a shabby room, dishevelled with books unread and re-read countless times…

to witness the act of writing - be it a staged enaction, wherein  an artist just slips his malleable soul into the garb of the prophet - to witness the act itself is a travesty, an ache on the roof of one’s mouth: out of reach, foreign, uneasiness swirling. nothing soothes, or quite imparts the strength to digest reality like the simulated sound of a virtual typewriter - the old, familiar clang that sustained generations of kindred souls, the tolling of the bell that eclipsed the knell of death, of betrayal, of a life cut short by cruelty, of unrequited love, of angst, of abuse - that of others and the self.

our modern machines that make life so easy, appear as a hindrance, an obstacle to the realization of my true self. or is it just incompetence, meandering as un-bloomed fantasies, that have been thwarted by none but my own futile sense of pride, which, in the very end, is nothing, but a pile of dust, that glints in the sunlight, and appears like the first pearls of dew-like snow?

beauty seems to be the only parameter for any semblance of human emotion we are willing to spare for another - beauty, or rather the bastardization of beauty, has rendered us barren, so dreadfully ugly. beauty consumes those who fawn upon it, destroys worlds, invades peaceful colonies, robs the poets of sleep, and urges the beguiled to sin.

my disfigured mind, once a slave to beauty, has broken its shackles from its dastardly regime. in the process, I've had to encounter my own ugliness - both without and within - bloated egos of the world that match my bloated skin - but it is dissatisfaction that I’m bursting with. dissatisfaction at the absence of prodigious blood in my veins, the kind that can foretell worldly events, conjure multiverses, concoct reservoirs of colors undreamt of, and feel the fabric of the world, the way one obtusely feels their own skin shielding their inner darknesses. ennui mingles with narcissism, flowers bloom at the edge of deserted lakes - the forest nymphs weep and wail under the blood-red moon, and the lovers die, without loving one another - alone, forlorn, their death a meaningless crease in the fold of the universe.

staring down at the unimpressive rising and falling of the telltale buttons - the very mechanism that allows me to stay afloat - I choke with tears that do not quite justify the source of my misfortune (perceived?). the faint, dull wail of the automation keeps me warm, but the sudden silence fills the home, no, just an apartment, with thunderous, ominous vulnerability. my bones ache along with the foundations of the house - the parakeets have made a nest among the polluted shrubberies, unlike their usual design to avoid large, empty cities. they screech , in imitation of my acute helplessness, mocking my hapless complaints, rendering me completely alone, while being surrounded by blood of the most coagulated, and thickest kind.

the neighborhood cats feast upon leftovers, as I look into the window of a world unexplored , ridden with darkness visible, and demons that admire your flesh while you  are half asleep. the walls twist and boil over, while i savour, in disgust, the heaviness of my existence, the meaningless lull of my name, called out by someone who brought about  an acutely unwanted genesis. the cries of the parakeets fade away, and the automation starts crawling around my skin again, enveloping me in a almost-comfortable embrace…the spell is broken, by the vision of my forefathers, on their animal parchments, and blood-like inked etchings, their truly broken hearts and the deceit of my own.
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