Tag Archives: COVID19

Day 04 – the flat curve round the corner

04 The falling Curve

Was intending to write a poem based on exercise from yesterday’s Na/GloPoWriMo site. However, I spent so long collecting words (part of the task) that I had no time left to actually write the thing. So I’ll try & get to that tomorrow using the words gathered today.

So this then is a quick stopgap, started only an hour ago, based on one of the dozen or so ideas I’ve got stockpiled to work on this month. As such, it’s a bit rushed, but it’s okay. As I always say, Na/GloPoWriMo is not about crafting perfect poems but trying new things, having poems to work on post April; & occasionally if you’re lucky catching a lightning bolt or two in a bottle along the way.

*****

decurving

i.
the challenge with the whole lockdown
don’t leave the house, isolate yourself
curve-squashing philosophy is if it works
all the instant expert naysayers will neigh
see it wasn’t as bad as your henny penny
sky’s falling economy-killing hysteria predicted
— which although technically frustrating
is surely not as grave as the alternative,

ii,
despite this, some debate whether the cost
of flattening is really the lesser of the evils
— which in a way overlooks an essential issue
the fact that we as a species are living
way above our credit level & treating earth
as a giant hypermarket where we can grab
anything we want without needing to pay
— well, debts are starting to be called in.

Day 03 – the falling of the sky

factory farm

Slowly working up steam. About Defcon 3 I’d say. Alert but not alarmed. 

This doesn’t quite say what I was intending to say (or at least, not in the way I was trying to say it) when I started the poem, but it will have to do as midnight is approaching.

*****

not so little chickens

while the wet markets of Wuhan & elsewhere might be
(rightly) copping criticism as hotbeds for terrifying new
viral species-hoppers even scarier prospects face every
one of us at much closer distances to hearth & home

for our modern factory chicken facilities are now far closer
to laboratories than farms where the paltry poultry are more
like drug-addled addicts than the cutesy feathered friends
we envisage scratching round in green country gardens for grubs

today owing to genetic streamlining, stress, & overcrowding
vaccines, sulfa drugs & antibiotics are routinely added
to feed to combat the toxic bloodbath of immunodeficiencies
cancerous tumours, pus, faecal matter, & bacterial contamination

it is from one of these noble agribusinesses many virologists believe
the next great pathogen will emerge to indiscriminately kill
                                                                                                                  both fowl & man

Day 02 – the apocalypse tiptoes slowly in

02 Villette

Hmmm, another nice one. When does the apocalypse get here?

Patience, I’m going over some of the books I’ve been reading recently & gathering all the bits I need. Soon the dystopias will start.

*****

slippage

what is being termed
social isolation by every
suddenly ultraexpert
medical practitioner
& socialmedia maestro
on the digital planet
sounds less like weeks
of solo soul hellage
cut off from the world
& all that other so-called
                         important stuff

& more like a couple
of normal gareth days
slipping stretchtinglingly
into several lazy idyllic
weeks of sublime solitude
— even if that slippage
means i’m not sure whether
it’s sunday or september
(so long as nasty things like
curve flattening & latest
statistics are somehow
                          over looked)

 

Photo: Villette enjoying a lazy autumn day at home, unaware of the term, “social isolation”. (Also, I didn’t realise she too is half-slipping until I uploaded the pic, so a double whammy)

Day 01 – tapping the zeitgeist

01 chasey

Well, April aficionados. It’s here again. Na/GloPoWriMo. Was wondering whether I should participate again this year given how exhausting it can be. But given it will be my 7th consecutive year participating & given there’s been a bit of a poeting drought recently & given that we all have plenty of time on our hands, I thought, well why not.

That said, I’m gonna try something I’ve not done for Na/GloPoWriMo before: that is, to write every poem around a theme. That theme is quite zeitgeisty but it is the thing my brain (& I’m sure many others too) is most occupied with at the moment. 

So brace yourself for 30 fun-filled poems about the plague. Well, pandemics & other cheerful TEOTWAWKI style things.

A gentle one to lead us in. (The apocalypse comes later)

*****

chasey / 21st-century style 

by the cries / next door’s kids
are inventing a new form     of an old game
they’re calling out the rules
over the fence as they create
Audrey’s got coronavirus
& she’s got to catch us
& when you’re caught
you’ve got to isolate yourself

it’s ring-a-rosie all over again
which sounds fun for a while
till they realise being only 6
Audrey doesn’t understand
the rules of social isolation   (like many others)

it ends the way all such games
have for millennia / arguments
a collision or other accident
a banged up knee / tears
& someone crying / running
/ to be comforted  //  by mum