Pandemic Poems
Coping With Covid
by Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar
Caught between Covid teeth
Some fall down;
Some with guts and zeal
Usually stand up.
Among all who exist and rise
Only the fittest survive.
History smiles on paper
As mankind is known for eons
By its immune power—
......
Poverty as a Pandemic Pain
by Ololade Raji
Life in the hood means nothing without a livelihood as those in the hood will choose livelihoods over lives. Maybe you now know why the frenzy virus feeds on your lives through the hunger of those in the hood
But if you fear the virus and still value your life above your livelihood, then, you are not in the hood. And you better not leave those in the hood to leave the hood for food and the virus
For it is good to move their food to the hood so they remain in the hood, then, you would not need to brood over their covid moves to leave their hood
I hope you know the gloom that looms if you do not give a hoot and look beyond loots. Have I just told you how to woo those in the hood with food to stay at home?
If you do not believe that you need food to ease the pandemic pains in the hood, you would neither believe in the corona dirge for a sweet aunt nor a word from this howl
......
Lamentations of A Free Inmate
by Ololade Raji
It was indeed a long night, as many tossed and turned in a dreamless void. Yet, for the fifth moon in the year of the virus, I would rather remain locked down
Lest you shed my piteous fate another tear, know my lot in life is a little better than the isolated souls in stealthy battle with death. And of those quarantined only to the tiny quotas for the breath of life, but who would rather trade in such direness for an instant demise
It is any and every soul in this oubliette who has been locked up but with doors ajar. Seers say with the bliss of a century comes agonies in an annual crisis of pains. Yet, mortality in these days of May may be more than those in prior months of His unmerited mercies
Let those who still long for the new decade’s daydreams now appreciate the post-pandemic possibilities of a new norm and...
Let those who eventually live to tell the tale, share with generations the wrath of the minutely unseen, for this dreary night of nightmares is utterly devoid of a wink of deep sleep
......
Hum Dekhte
by Thanshu Guliani
Hum bhi agar panchi hote to aakash dekhte
Saari duniya so rahi hoti magar hum prakash dekhte
Mausam jo bhi hota, par apni chah me aksar
Hum apne pankh khol dete aur log humari udaan dekhte
Hum makan dekhte
Hum, makan dekhte
jinme kitni aankhe taras rahi hai udne ko
jahan in cheekhon ka naam nahi hai rukne ko
......
Pandemic Pandemonium
by Christine Kuruvilla
They say words and weapons kill,
So our leaders drafted bill after bill.
Yet now we see, with mournful eyes—
Man needs neither to cause his demise.
It takes but a moment—
Then no voice, no sentiment
Will soften the sound
Of shattered dreams on blood-stained ground.
......
Ghost Town
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
I saw one with the placidness of death
A necropolis pummelled, with mallets of sorrow,
By the brutishness of Silence and numbed by the
Prickly shafts of premature grey hair, sickly and odorous.
Even Tokyo, normally awash with people and pets,
Pots and pans, observed the rules of siesta.
I witnessed it —a virus so vicious —!
A plague that humbled one and all —
Troglodytes we!
Fit Covid-19
by Stewart Watkins
Pushups and planks
Now armpits stank.
Roping and jumping
Outdoors I'm loving
Kicking and punching
Tension and stress I'm releasing
Netflix on house arrest
......
The Sound of Silence
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Splashing down liquid voices,
a troubled peace of silence enveloped
the fragile land.
Here comes Queen Lockdown with her septic flowers.
The church bells chime mutely,
with refined silence and hypnotic horror.
Funerals and weddings merged like companies,
Counting on numbers frugally.
......
Seasons of evil - number 19
by Steve Solodoff
It once again has begun.
Upon me fully, all at once, without warning.
Though I should have known,
I should have been ready.
It happens again;
at the same time,
in the same way,
with the same sickening dread.
But I fear this year, this season,
......
Pandemic March 2020
by Michele Bandler
I don’t know what day it is anymore
And time no longer matters
Modern life as I’ve known it,
Is on hold.
Beliefs I’d long held, are turned upside down.
“Virtual communication – cell phones ----are isolating us,”
I’d said. “Get out of your house, join a group, meet face to face” I’d said.
Now, technology is all that we have to connect, since we
Cannot get out, join a group, or meet face to face.
......
