Covid

Today is the one-too-many time 
where you woke and turned on the bark
   of the morning news
These smiling pay-for-viewing marionettes 
   dictate protocols/suggest emotional responses
with screaming red backgrounds/
shelf fears during commercial breaks
/hammer at witnesses of a drowning world
 
We are schooled for the umpteenth time about masks 
   and given statistics.
Those numbers glue us 
   captive to people with anonymous lives 
   and photos of coffins and graves 
of strangers we will never encounter 
   with a smile on a sidewalk 
   or a step-aside passing on a trail in the woods.
Their souls weigh us down at night. 
Like this down-encased duvet, 
   too warm for this smothering June. 
We feel their weight
 and cough their ashes from broken sleep 
which never found dreams of beach sand.
 
The morning stifles. 
New Jersey humidity and buzzing 
   mosquitos thicken the air. 
Commuters race to work. 
Cars slam short in stop and jolt to go.
We are all adrenalized and angry. 
We are tears behind thoughts and 
   pillars of salt from images
   thrust through lenses and magnified 
   on screens blue into sleepless nights.
Our shadows are cast ghosts of viruses
   and those neighbors we never knew. 
We hold survivor’s guilt and terror 
   in blistered hands - jingle belled to bleeding.
 
Scabbed, but open 
Please, I whisper, turn it off.