Love in the Time of Corona

Love in the Time of Corona

(I wonder, really, how the beer is doing)

 

It’s not a good time

To be sick with something else

Even though it is

I mean, the current, awful thing

Is still untreated (though

there are indications)

And a sinus infection can be

Treated

I talked with my p-a

Because we can’t visit face-to-face

It would have been a video chat

Except my sister whose machine

This was

Dislikes the video component of her

Work and so disable the parts

On this computer so that they cannot

Work again,

And I don’t blame her

 

So we talked, Emily the p-a and I

I got my usual scolding for not doing

Everything I should be doing

(I’m not brave as much as I’m poor),

And I agreed to be taking everything along with

The new thing

Getting some kind of cuff to track

My pressure and my pulse, which

Must be worse for everyone

Just now

Plus the reward of an antibiotic,

Which is how it feels to me even though she

Dangled nothing as a prize

 

So maybe by the end of day

I’ll be resupplied and newly supplied

The stress will be better, my eyes,

And the infection

(better for infection meaning gone)

Be as well as I can be with

Everything ongoing

 

C L Couch

 

 

with thanks and apologies to Gabriel García Márquez

 

Love in the Time of Cholera – Wikipedia

Love in the Time of Cholera (Spanish : El amor en los tiempos del cólera) is a novel by Colombian Nobel prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez. The novel was first published in Spanish in 1985. Alfred A. Knopf published an English translation in 1988, and an English-language movie adaptation was released in 2007.

 

 

Photo by Stéfano Girardelli on Unsplash

Brasil

Native American guardian totem

 

Updating

Updating

 

There is a virus in the world that’s

Killing people

(there are other things that kill us, too)

 

Some people, many, most in fact

Have responded well

Quietly, not so quietly

Watching after

Each other

Enduring hoarding that is

The villain’s privilege

 

Governments have

Responded, some much

Later than the others

Some are doing well, though the more

Fractious institutions

(not so much the scientific ones,

we hope)

The more the stumping

As if this were a matter more

For Indifferent reelection

Than the health

Of nations, cities, villages, and

Outlying—families, one

Person by one

 

So more will die

And the privileged

Will not take credit for this

 

In the scientific places,

Teams are working hard, to say the least,

The right kind of aggression

Understanding that

There are no politics in molecules,

That a virus doesn’t care

Who gets elected

Who stamps harder in

The podium floor

Like Rumpelstiltskin, until disappearing

 

Molecules don’t care

The molecules of viruses simply

Want to thrive

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Kras-Driven Lung Cancer. Created by Eric Snyder, 2015.

 

Mortals Thinking

Mortals Thinking

 

There’s such pain in my shoulders

I guess I slept too hard

And too briefly

There are noises in the house

Some of which I’m tired of

But in the be-thankful-for-small-favors

Department,

It could be worse—

Does that cancel out philosophies?

 

We should be stuck here in

Willing confinement

‘Til the onslaught of disease has passed

If it’s a wave that only washes once

If it spirals ‘round, what then?

Patchworks of isolation

Until a cure is found

Then distributed with some sense of

Democracy (in oligarchies,

call it equanimity)

 

At least, there’s air

No one is trying to sell

And water from the tap or

Through a filter, while we have one

There’s food, a median between

Hoarding and scarcity

For the moment, shelter is broadening

In possibilities for some places

Hitherto homeless folk entering

Abandoned, government houses

If they’re abandoned, let them stay

Useful government

As a change

 

I don’t know about our attitudes

They’re everywhere, I’d say

The gross rich who are on TV

To say that everything’s fine

Trust us

We don’t

The angry and the righteous

More so (and everyone), there’s

Fear

Of illness and mortality

Reasonable terrors

For the unfaithful

And for those who believe still living inside

Human husks

I know I don’t want to be shed of my shell

Just yet

Today, tomorrow, far into the future

I don’t have

This side of the dark glass

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

 

 

Crowning Virus

Crowning Virus

 

Coronavirus

The liar says it’s under control

The doctors and the sick know better

A victim is the one who

First called out

 

It won’t go without a cure

There isn’t one

If something supernal is revenging

Us, I do not know

Nor can it matter now

We don’t know how to sacrifice

Upon an altar made of stone and wood

It’s just as well

Eventually, we’d think of blood

 

As a scientific matter,

It could work out

But only if we keep the heart of it

We suffer and we die

On every side

 

If monolithic fiends could put aside

Gilt agendas

In favor of a geode, crystalline in all

Directions

 

The Earth still shines

We are smart and still have

The better things inside

There is danger like the predator’s

How we respond will make us,

Keep us who we are

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by JR Korpa on Unsplash