When I was eight,  
The Great Recession began.  
During it,  
I heard a line
that floated
off the page of a poem
and into me
“We hope the world survives.”
– Hope –  
I remember that
and the nights I spent  
sat up  
on the uncomfortable  
wheezy wooden floor
of my home
constructing a new one  
from Legos,
where I could see  
by way of a light switch
not a Coleman lantern.  
Where I could eat
by way of a real stove top
not a portable one.  
You’d think  
that I was camping,  
not sweating  
in the stagnant air
of a house  
devoid of power.  
Now,  
a virus moves
unseen among grass
beneath out feet,  
flirts between the vacancy  
of embraces
and  
the fear of a handshake.  
We speak words
underneath masks
and hope –  
that this,
will be over soon.

Two and a half weeks into this quarantine
Rainy days and
no poems
No words forthcoming
All quiet
I decide that perhaps
if I just put one
Word
In front of another
And keep on for a time
Words upon words
something will come?

At 8:30 every morning
A man passes
walking a Pomeranian mix
A joyful little dog
(I’d steal him in a heartbeat)
They walk
He twirling the leash round and round
The dog leaping higher and higher still.
They dance together eyes meeting
and smile as I know a dog can
and I remember
how I would dance with my last greyhound.
We would tango and box-step.
I always led.

These days the little
Pomeranian can’t get his attention
anymore
The leash doesn’t twirl above its head
He’s pulled along impatiently
There are no more smiles
Their eyes won’t meet
He’s slow to realize that he’s become a drudgery
I want to yell out the window
I see you
EVERY MORNING AROUND 8:30!
Where’s your joy gone buddy?
Don’t you know that’s all you’ve got?
You’re bumming me out for real
and your dog loves you!
Wake up! You fool wake up!

I think that now I’ll walk to Ralph’s
I have various thoughts while doing so
Children race their bikes passed me
as if they’re in an entirely other reality
altogether
and
maybe they are.
The wind blows through their hair
effortlessly
As if it couldn’t mine.

Front lawns offer up fields of dandelions
as if their orbs the most prized bounty
Freshly mown grass smells new and clean instead of putrid, rotting in the sunshine
The fulsome wafts of springtime’s
jasmine and osmanthus heaving with citrus and pepper evade me as I pass their blossoms
Yet on the rare occasion a fragrant rose pierces through the weft and hits a nostril
but I can’t tell which bloom.

The smooth talking
homeless girl
has finally covered up that
diabetic open sore on her left ankle
the size of a flattened crimson football
which is something,
although I can see that
she’s being told to move along as
she just can’t sit anywhere she pleases.

I’m counting every time I see the word “dead” along my way.

In the store the ladies that buy
their bottles of white wine in the afternoon
are starting earlier now
with supplies and deliveries
unsure
It’s one thirty and I see
Two bottles of Clos du Bois
And four Domaine St. Michelles
in the cart to my right
and nothing else
as they do.
I’m not going to ask her
about her dinner party.

While I stare at packages of coffee
A man pulls off his mask to sneeze into the air before him
And I say to the older man approaching
I don’t think that you’ll be going any farther
in that direction.
It was under my breath.
He didn’t hear me.
I have a mask on.
He turned his cart around and walked back
the way he came.

I have this urge to talk to everyone.
I have this relentless desire for ice cream.
I miss everything.
Nothing here
will satisfy anything
to do with me.
Can one survive a global catastrophe
with candy and magical thinking?

Older people
And by that
I mean really old people
Eye me suspiciously
Almost fearful
As if I myself alone
embody
the menacing contagion
and I guess I could.
Perhaps I do.
It’s hard to read emotions with these masks
But their eyes seem terribly unkind and
brows, furrowed
One stares at me hard
with beady anger and a ready insult
another will jump me in the checkout line
and with great solicitude
unwrap her money from
the white notebook paper
pulled from the manila envelope
Now re-folded with
rubber bands and string
And placed back
into her chest
She is so sweet to the cashier
with her black acrylic wig askew
that he seems quite shocked to hear
she cut in front of
fifteen people
without so much as a word.
Who cares really?

My first mask made me sneeze for four hours straight and made my nose burn like a hit of **** *******.
I’ve been handed a free mask by
a representative
from my local assemblyman
made of a softer material
I find that
it won’t stay up and fogs the base of my glasses.
I don’t think it’s working.
It reads
We’re All In This Together.

I still can’t breathe.

The doomed asthmatic
selling his single ciggies on the sidewalk
dies on Staten Island
from a policeman’s chokehold.
Eric Garner
In those desperate last moments
of
his
2014
despite his pleas and confusion
surely there before him appeared
although not quite the end that he’d envisioned or feared
what with steroid inhalers from the pharmacy
a crystalline moment
when he knew without a doubt that
he’d never take another gasp of air
like a bloated goldfish on its side
expressionless and saucer eyed
outside its bowl
What happened to his mind then?
What will happen to mine?

It has been said that
certain tribal kings
have brought before them
after battle
their most worthy enemy
in the process of imminent death
while they sit in numinous splendor
and wait for that perfect moment
to lean in close to the mouth
and inspire greedily
the purest
most sublime
expiration of their life force,
now a pristine delicacy of the infinite,
for themselves alone.

I watch
My mind
Cast words
In lines
That carve
Then bind
To stem
The weeping
Of wounds
They leave
Behind.
And I breathe
Into
My body
Onto
My mat
Next to
My partner
Stitching bits
Together
In order
To
Remember.

It doesn't come as a surprise,
Of course life’s always a struggle;
But with Coronavirus too,
The struggle is only more real.

Suffering is not new,
Nor hunger, or poverty;
Yet more than ever
People now see the reality.

Coronavirus not the biggest risk,
yet its presence here is still deadly;
With an Economy crumbling to pieces,
We all wonder what will happen to this Country?

Though numbers are low,
Compared to the first World,
Collateral damage is devastating,
With the lockdown, the situation deteriorating.

We sit here, we wait,
Watch the news at nine,
For its impossible here
To be online all the time.

Some people are scared,
Some people don't care;
Or perhaps its more a case
Of being used to living in fear.

Queues are miles long,
Yet these people are lucky;
For many there is now dire hunger,
Food parcels not reaching the poor.

The Government is doing its best,
To limit the effects of this virus,
On the health of society,
But perhaps more, on the dying economy.

Inequalities are not new,
But now they are stark and real;
The rich minority at relative ease,
The rest of the Country diseased…

People die here all the time,
The health system stretched as it is;
So how do we tell these people,
They need to go hungry to live?

With untreated disease already a burden,
Coronavirus alone is not such a risk;
But what it does do
Is creates yet more poverty and sick.

People are trying to understand
What is happening in the World;
But for most the World is far…
That World is now affecting this World…

For us, neither rich or poor,
A rare case of “in the middle;,
We are able to grow vegetables,
Write music, get to the clinic.

We also watch in horror
At those suffering now even more,
For those in informal settlements,
Social distancing is just not possible.

People are going without,
Trying to live on one meal a day;
Or going to bed hungry,
Feeding their children instead, as they continue to pray.

People here live day by day,
Earning just enough to buy bread;
With this now taken away,
They’re desperate, and some are dead.

Not due to this virus,
But death still continues;
Beaten to death by the Army,
At home, with their families….

The situation here is dire,
This Country far from developed;
The poverty, the hunger, the desperate,
No water in taps in some districts.

The situation here is dire,
I cannot lie or pretend it’ll all be fine;
people are suffering all around me
And yet all I can do is …..stay at home.

I sit here writing this helpless,
Able to teach, if it was possible for those to learn;
I feel the desperation of parents,
Education in this land must go on.

But as for now
We are either “stopped in time”, or desperate;
How the schools will eventually cope
Is anyones guess.

People need food,
People need school,
people need help,
But…..people have not lost hope.

As for myself
I write, and I plan some more;
Hoping that one day soon,
I’ll be able to help a lot more….

……Nomkhumbulwa…….

I shift
To rise
And
To unfold
And watch
Legs
Extend from
Hips
He’s known
And held
As me,
And I
Wonder
What
And whom
They’re for
Before
I join
Him
And the others
In pretending
Together
To be
Apart.

can't get out of the house
can't get out of my head
nothing to be said
no need to leave my bed
what a day
flipping hay
what to do
what to say
could pick up food
but to save money
we stay
inside my mind
a constant rhyme
a song plays on
repeat on
this line
straight on
again find myself
a slap of butter stick
melt me on repeat
into these sheets
turn up the heat
feeling weak i finally speak
up on what's
going on
inside is the world
I carry on  
with this poem

She flits
Through my mind
And I
Feel her
Laughter
In my bones
As joints
Release
With a pop.
She rests
Around the edges
Of my mind
And I feel
Her burdens
As I
Reach into
Growth.
She gazes
Into my eyes
And I
Recognize
Myself in grey
As breath fills
My body,
Making room
For all
Of what
Could be.