Build your fort and be its watchman
Wound me with silence or cut me with words
Humiliate me, remove happiness
Put me in lonely company
Make me autarkic

I will battle with whispers
I will hide in plain sight
I will sulk in the now
I will **** with looks
I can cry in secret

How well I know this place
with its multicolored, sloping gardens
and glittering, fountained pools
but its beauty is fleeced by repetition

Loneliness tests the resolution of the young
with our howling appetite to experience
and be shaped by exposures.

Like the gleaming barrel of a gun,
the clock points at nothing
and the crimson sunset leads
to another empty, quiet night.

The virus will fade in the summer heat.
It's Trumps hoax folks - it’s a joke folks.

Drink your Lysol and get back on the street.
Look, it’s a hoax folks - it’s a joke folks.

We can trade those masks in for some caskets
Yes, it’s a hoax folks - you’ll be ok folks.

Send your kids to school - some will die, but that’s cool.
This is no hoax folks - some kids will die folks.

Or they’ll bring the virus right back to you.
Safety’s a joke folks - do the republican choke folks.

The average bill for ICU care - is 20K folks
chump change folks - just pay the man, folks

One Hundred and Fifty Thousand dead
But vote for Trump folks - if your family's alive folks

my psyche is stretched
thin without depth
in humanity’s waning
straining staring into the abyss
of loss

I’ve been working on my website - it’s been neglected far too long.
I’ve been wearing out Spotify - I may have listened to every song.
I walk five miles a day - because you’ve got to get outside
and I can easily spend an hour a day on “Just Dance” exercise.
I’ve been taking free on-line courses at “open university”
They have a thousand choices - an almost endless diversity.
Have you ever heard of “Headspace” - it can help you to relax
If you haven’t tried meditation for stress - I think it’s unsurpassed.
I’m learning about meal planning and cooking things with ease
I’ve been Zooming with a friend in China, to freshen up my Cantonese.
Even with a thousand distractions - this lockdown is driving me crazy
But it isn’t because I have nothing to do, and it isn’t because I’m lazy.
People just need people - so that we can laugh, love and compete,
or simply be together - that’s how humans feel complete.

I have to say, this isolation doesn't appear to be affecting me at all.

I was thinking... The wind must come from somewhere.

Do the trees make the wind with their ceaseless moving around?

“KKKeeeeepp STILL!!” I shriek at the trees from my bedroom window but they pretend not to hear. Science says trees can talk to each other over some secret, underground, filament-like network - so I know the ba$tards are listening.

And I don’t know about this new generation of birds - these tearless, happy birds that chirp just to be fashionable. They annoy me when they pretend to be unaware of the value of silence.

“Shut UP!” I scream at a speckled bird who stares down at me like I’m insignificant.

“Yeah, the woolly mammoths ignored us too,” I remind it.

I give it the two-fingered, back and forth “Yeah, I’m watching you” gesture.

Then it just chirps right past me, as if I don't exist. Aaarrrgghhh!

So I give that bird the bird.

There's no sheltering in a public place.
There's no coming together face to face.
Keeping away from you keeps me secure,
I’m keeping away from you, but praying for a cure.
Obeying all the rules 'cause that's how I roll.
But staying away from you is taking quite a toll.
I'm getting weirder and weirder as time goes by
No distraction techniques are making this all right.
Laying in bed all night wide-eyed and hardly sleeping.
Enjoying my binge of repetitive negative thinking.

I dread the scorching sun
     and clouds came and it rained
I despair evil's pervasive presence
     and the virus came and destroyed
I detest the liar speaking truth
     and I wait the day the liar silenced
I dream the love foregone for love
     and I'm assured that it'll be and forever