COVID VORTEX There is a twister in town called COVID Vortex View A wild mixture lunch hunch A lonely, outcast, quarantine bunch who meet Shivering in some frozen, curbside, shanty-cafe On a makeshift COVID take-out Tavern Street With a broken heat lamp greet Trying to ignore the city pee-smell perfume All in for a cocktail brunch whiskey egg Some pandemic plague punch Irish paper cup, coffee to go, god damn Bloody Mary sippy cup whatever A zombie bottle snuggles My broken Everything Bagel, King Lear schmear. Let''s share this traffic stop bistro A desperate welcome break from Zoom gloom, please Settle in this rough and crumble shack Get the witch''s broom to clear Only a few dozen rats chew Scatter unaffected in midair Whew! A whirlwind quarantine Zoom sizzle flirt Variants and altered dimensions dirt Daily COVID alert hurt DeBlasio, Cuomo compete Words from Fauci can''t be beat And that doctor lady with the scarves A kind of Corona avoid ride glide COVID Fashion statement avoid ride See you in a ZOOM breakout room for Pride! Sometimes this Vortex is a shapeshifter Lasts for days or for hours, months or years In a fraction of magical realism You do not know where you are What day it is What day you are on What planet you are on When you changed your clothes Before or after Tiger King? How long have you been wearing . anything .or nothing! I guess it is time to make friends with the Paper Tiger. Sometimes you stare into space. You are on the internet reading something Or you just baked bread or did a project with chia seeds Two days passed and the SCOBY is nowhere to be found. And suddenly you miss humanity and recall your long lost love teenage years a quiet whimper without shedding tears The peace sign disposable mask fogs glasses And then you hear some more bad news So you keep this all to yourself and store this emotion in some locked, secret place far away, yet tethered nearby Even with a smile. You can''t remember the future or repeat what it was Working in some time-warp where your eyes cross on cue Or just get lost in a vortex COVID tunnel stew You can''t remember what you did or who you are or who you have become or who you ever were to make you so clouded And so you wait another day and then you are tired from waiting and then you order in or go outdoors or plan on something There is the glazed look everything takes forever and every task is infinity Depression isn''t completely to blame Your hair and beard and roots grow out like you have been dead for six weeks.
It is a dimensional curse of cortex vortex display And it is getting worse. You try to distract or look at the sky. Take a walk Get out of town but the vortex is still there, the freak-out. A week has passed and then a month and now it is another year and another year or two or three. Doesn''t matter anyway What you planned to do Some do not make it back and some habits are better than others You either have lost everything or found nothing Except the twisted discomfort of this dystopian galaxy How can you help provide some PPE? Heartbroken shock sorrow misplaced fright The phone rings The texts No, no, oh no They didn''t recover They didn''t make it. Were they alone? Did they suffer? You open the window it is 7pm You cry a cheer. Everyone cheers like an open wound For the medical field, the essential workers, first responders. Just to make sound Send a meal.
Try to help. Try not to get sick But you do.