Covids-21 through 37, by Robert Gore
Covids-21 through 37
Defiance is poetry.
Covidly I gaze into your eyes.
Once again I fantasize.
Would you, love, remove your mask?
Alas, a question I cannot ask.
They know what we say, do, think, and write.
It doesn’t stop when we turn out the light.
Six feet between us, masks must remain on,
Which presents a problem: how will we spawn?
The moonlit gazebo where I proposed,
No more fond visits, the park is closed.
The quaint little shop that made your gown,
By mayor’s order, forever shut down.
These many years we’ve kept apart.
When does it end? How did it start?
The love we said would ever inspire us
Held hostage to a coronavirus.
In our house we’re inmates now.
The crossword puzzles we vow:
We’ll not employ a thesaurus.
Truth be told, crosswords bore us.
Yet every day it’s down and across,
Confession that we’re at a loss
To fill the endless time and tedium.
Everything’s an unhappy medium.
Endure perpetual house arrest.
All the best people will attest:
There’s happiness in shelter-in-place,
Discover joy in your tiny space.
It matters not you can’t pay the rent,
Fresh from the printer, scrip is sent.
Madly they print, madly they borrow.
Why worry about posterity’s sorrow?
You liked your job? You liked your work?
Don’t you know such sentiments irk
Our potentates and their retinue,
Those who talk but cannot do?
You want independence, to pay your own way?
What a radical, dangerous thing to say.
We’re all in this together, that is why,
Universal basic income is nigh.
Media rot fills heads, hour after hour.
Risk exclusion if you question power.
From Youtube, Facebook and Twitter banned,
Online exile, virtual no-man’s land.
There’s offline whispers of an Eden,
A distant land known as Sweden.
Who set their own course in 2020.
Censured then, now they know plenty.
Once I had fond hopes and dreams.
My head’s now filled with silent screams,
Imaginary plots I have hatched.
Armed men from the state dispatched
To punish any noncompliance,
To sunder any rebel alliance.
In padded rooms go the rebellious,
Nanny’s nurses gently compel us.
Use the toilet, wipe your ass,
Or we’ll revoke your TV pass.
Open wide, eat your gruel.
Sit up straight, please don’t drool.
Lo! I have raged against our fate,
House arrest til 2038.
Our rulers care about you and me,
But not enough to set us free.
Cures have been rumored for many a year,
All of which spark their deepest fear.
The cures are cheap, so they await a vaccine,
From Pharma partners, the profits obscene.
Sunlight and fresh air build immunity
But you can’t go outdoors with impunity.
Exercise, play with kids, or labor,
You might get snitched on by a neighbor.
For safety’s sake, what they have wrought,
Protects public health, so we are taught.
If this is it, this sterile hive,
I’d rather not remain alive.
Copyright, Robert Gore, 2020
Feel free to distribute far and wide
To all those pondering Coronacide.
But if you share my contribution,
Please include a link and attribution.
Defiance is poetry.
Covidly I gaze into your eyes.
Once again I fantasize.
Would you, love, remove your mask?
Alas, a question I cannot ask.
They know what we say, do, think, and write.
It doesn’t stop when we turn out the light.
Six feet between us, masks must remain on,
Which presents a problem: how will we spawn?
The moonlit gazebo where I proposed,
No more fond visits, the park is closed.
The quaint little shop that made your gown,
By mayor’s order, forever shut down.
These many years we’ve kept apart.
When does it end? How did it start?
The love we said would ever inspire us
Held hostage to a coronavirus.
In our house we’re inmates now.
The crossword puzzles we vow:
We’ll not employ a thesaurus.
Truth be told, crosswords bore us.
Yet every day it’s down and across,
Confession that we’re at a loss
To fill the endless time and tedium.
Everything’s an unhappy medium.
Endure perpetual house arrest.
All the best people will attest:
There’s happiness in shelter-in-place,
Discover joy in your tiny space.
It matters not you can’t pay the rent,
Fresh from the printer, scrip is sent.
Madly they print, madly they borrow.
Why worry about posterity’s sorrow?
You liked your job? You liked your work?
Don’t you know such sentiments irk
Our potentates and their retinue,
Those who talk but cannot do?
You want independence, to pay your own way?
What a radical, dangerous thing to say.
We’re all in this together, that is why,
Universal basic income is nigh.
Media rot fills heads, hour after hour.
Risk exclusion if you question power.
From Youtube, Facebook and Twitter banned,
Online exile, virtual no-man’s land.
There’s offline whispers of an Eden,
A distant land known as Sweden.
Who set their own course in 2020.
Censured then, now they know plenty.
Once I had fond hopes and dreams.
My head’s now filled with silent screams,
Imaginary plots I have hatched.
Armed men from the state dispatched
To punish any noncompliance,
To sunder any rebel alliance.
In padded rooms go the rebellious,
Nanny’s nurses gently compel us.
Use the toilet, wipe your ass,
Or we’ll revoke your TV pass.
Open wide, eat your gruel.
Sit up straight, please don’t drool.
Lo! I have raged against our fate,
House arrest til 2038.
Our rulers care about you and me,
But not enough to set us free.
Cures have been rumored for many a year,
All of which spark their deepest fear.
The cures are cheap, so they await a vaccine,
From Pharma partners, the profits obscene.
Sunlight and fresh air build immunity
But you can’t go outdoors with impunity.
Exercise, play with kids, or labor,
You might get snitched on by a neighbor.
For safety’s sake, what they have wrought,
Protects public health, so we are taught.
If this is it, this sterile hive,
I’d rather not remain alive.
Copyright, Robert Gore, 2020
Feel free to distribute far and wide
To all those pondering Coronacide.
But if you share my contribution,
Please include a link and attribution.
No one could write it any better.
But I do deplore the deadly ending
Which will prohibit me from sending.
Hope waxes eternal, the will to live
Is a better piece of advice to give.
Don't even bring up coronacide;
Hope ignored is hope denied.
Your verse could be an immortal allusion
If only you'd rewrite its morbid conclusion.
Is certainly not a waste of time.
But among the many life's too dear,
They've played upon the prevailing fear.
In that sterile hive I will not live,
Fighting it may require all I have to give.
Sometimes we have to make our stand,
That circumstance could be at hand.
I'm in it to win it, that much can be said.
I have no intention of winding up dead.
Hope waxes eternal; I hope you are right.
If not? I hope I wage an honorable fight.
Postscript:
With the same skill you show on the comment you send,
Feel free to suggest an alternative end.
For safety’s sake, what they have wrought,
Protects public health, so we are taught.
Let’s wisely handle this sequestered hive.
To repair the globe, we need you alive.
To help us defeat this microbial foe,
It’s what we do with what we know.
Nature gave us tools of resistance.
All we need now is heroic persistence.
The enemy is small, its power gigantic,
So let us pool smarts, resist being frantic.
If microbes in our bodies are ancient friends,
This is the time human enmity ends.
Each person, devoted to logic and life,
Can creatively win in this struggle and strife.
Not hatred, not wars, think freedom and trade.
Stop being a virus: each wins with mutual aid.
What I fear is incarceration.
No one devoted to logic and life,
Can creatively win in this struggle and strife.
When tyrants demand we ask permission,
On their petty whims depend our condition.
Microbial foes will come and then dwindle.
Liberty won't remain after this swindle.
Trade and freedom--they require a fight.
Darkness can't lose if we don't shine a light.
So while I thank you for your stanzas fine.
My judgment requires that I retain mine.
Yet I diverge into my own thoughts, without fear.
-------------------------------------------------------------
The human species is full of flaws;
Changing their habits needs a strong cause.
Disasters troubling on private levels
Rarely let loose a planet of devils.
Troubles must reach a pandemic size
Before enough people open their eyes.
Unhinged and unbalanced beyond quick repair,
They plunge all humanity into despair.
It’s only when things are desperate enough
That folks will be willing to try different stuff.
When all is in turmoil, they will accept change
That normally would be out of their range.
They’ve agreed to our wars on a dozen nations,
They give up their freedoms through tricks and evasions,
They allow murder and torture that decency shatters
And think jail for victimless crimes hardly matters.
Social unrest heats up like a chowder
While the doomsday clock clicks ever louder.
This is the moment when all will consent,
When jobs are lost and they can’t pay the rent,
When thousands are dying and millions succumb,
When old methods fail and everyone’s numb,
At their wits’ end, even the tyrants lose power
As desperation grows deeper, hour by hour,
We must not believe that all has failed,
That we must give up or be instantly jailed
That we are powerless in dictators’ grip,
Or that all is hopeless and we’ll go down with the ship
We CAN shine a light, we who love freedom and life,
We CAN overcome the worst of this strife.
We must not give up, our moment is now,
End human hatreds, no more sword, only plough.
We are the virus that sickens the soul,
Millennia of plunder and slavery our goal.
This is the moment for a new birth--
Never again human wars on the Earth.
We are the virus, let there be no doubt,
A virus of mind. Let’s put those demons to rout.
This worst’s for the best, a historic revival,
Without it there is no view of survival.
Pardon this lengthy versified ramble
Urging the long look at hope in this gamble.
Turn on the light of reason and peace,
Forever—the human on human violence must cease.
This is the moment, our minds’ virus must end
It must and it can, that’s the message to send.
We are the virus; the cure is at hand:
Rethink our evolution, make peace in every land.
This is the moment, at the bottom of the cave,
We find a new light and start a new wave.
No tyrants, no rulers—there’s the answer,
No armies, no gangs—they’re the cancer.
A hundred thousand years was a long-enough school:
Each person’s a sovereign, the long-sought golden rule.
We trade our smarts, a symbiosis of each skill.
At last our destiny, each of their own free will.
Wisdom worth saving; my hat's off to you.
Your hopes for the future will be our fate,
It starts with each person; it's never too late.
You inspired me. The words just kept flowing.
Please take off the mask,
I know you, I'd know you anywhere
There's none to compare....
eccchhhh!!
Put back the mask,
Please put back the mask.....
(They were literally Dark days- cloudy, day after day...The next sun cycle will bring those days back again as the Grand Solar Minimum sets in, I speculate.)
We were playing vintage Lego: Rock Band the other night and "Ruby" came up. My teenage daughter began improvising lyrics and they've stuck with us here: "Due to COVID-19... tomorrow is cancelled..."
Yes...the vaccine cometh! All effective antivirals be damned! Force will be the flavor dejour. Want your rights? Roll up that sleeve, brother...
It is amazing to me, three months into this thing, how easy and simple it was to turn the world economy into a coughing and sputtering wreck.
I'm glad you liked the poem and thanks for posting it.