#covid-19 Poetry

[rainbowpopeworld]

Source

[bulllinachinashop]

Why do the years 2020 and 2019 seem so long ago? Whenever someone mentions “yeah 2019 I did-“ oh you mean during the depression? the invisible plague that wreaked havoc across the globe? do you still feel 17? 12? 18? 26? Your’e older know, not just physically, mentally you’ve aged fifty years. 2019 wasn’t five years ago, it was a lifetime ago, it was another world ago, another you. I mourn each time you mention it.

[forthegothicheroine]

Passed Over

It didn't happen like this, that's what I always say.  When people say, these are the scientific reasons for the frogs, the blood, the hail-  Enough belief to be debunked while still clinging to the story.  No. The water did not turn to blood, for reasons of science or faith A story may have happened But not like this

Nevertheless

Death sweeps through the night Claiming the oldest first The first born, old enough to guide their children But not against this.

Some live. They've heard this before. Pestilence, that's a plague they know. But not like this.

Some live, and they are given reprieve Three days off of work, no more These workers are essential And in three days they must return

Pharaoh sees the streets are empty On the fourth day The lazy workers have fled for safer ground Or hide inside houses marked with blood Hoping these things will spare us From the tenth plague

Hoping on this night, unlike all other nights It will not be like this

On Archive of Our Own

[starcrossedandstupid]

Rough night. Feels like Covid again, but a little different. So different, exactly the same. I’m not sure if I’ll add more to it, but it felt ready enough to post.

[ammusingblog]

Covid was just a shitty attempt at population control.

[disasterhimbo]

there's laundry to do and a genocide to stop

By Vinay Krishnan

there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop. I have to eat better and also avoid a plague. my rent went up $150. I’ll need to pick up more shifts. Twenty people died in Rafah this morning and every major news outlet is stretching the limits of passive voice to suggest whole families may have leaped up through the air at missiles that otherwise had the right of way. I just got a notification that my student loan payments are starting up again and my phone isn’t charged. My cousin got COVID for a fourth time and can no longer work or walk or even feed himself. The person across from me on the L train seems to fashion themself a punk rock revolutionary, but they’re not wearing a face mask, and that’s the kind of cognitive dissonance that makes me want to steal batteries. Fascists keep winning primaries for both parties, and I think I gained a few pounds. The CDC just announced there are no more speed limits on highways, and I think this Ativan is finally hitting. The NYPD farmer’s market only sells bad apples, have you heard that one? Listen it’s warm today, too warm for March. But I don’t have time to think through the implications because there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop.

Source: https://x.com/vinayrkrishnan/status/1765428498573771235

[wiserebeltiger]

The tea pot clatters, seems on high

It hardly hurts my ears. I sigh.

[rden011]

Station Eleven

Walking the streets of the city when it went dark,

A call from an old friend soon to die,

There’s a virus,

Prepare,

Run,

Or within a day you will die.

Running through the streets of a city,

Stocking up on provisions,

The cashier looking at you as if you’ve gone mad.

Prepare,

Run,

You may not survive but you might as well try.

To your brother’s house,

To Frank,

In his room you barricade yourself from the plague,

You watch the news until the grid turns off,

He ghost writes for a ghost.

Hide,

Survive,

So many people have already died.

There are cars in the streets,

So few people.

Those who remain are feral or hidden.

When the snow falls and you know there will be no savior,

You set off through the snow.

Your brother wouldn’t make it,

He decided now was as good a time as any for death.

You wander through the world,

Find a motel and build a new life,

Where you aren’t a paparazzi,

Or a journalist.

You keep people alive,

You have a daughter.

—

On a plane when it went dark,

You make an emergency stop in Severn.

There’s a virus,

Collect yourself,

Read a book,

You didn’t know how important that moment would be.

Sitting in an airport terminal,

A girl needs her meds,

A plane wants to land and empty,

You don’t let it.

The people remained inside,

Collect yourself,

Keep things running,

A lost boy will read psalms to them, tell them they died for a reason.

A little settlement,

Elizabeth and Tyler sitting quietly in their madness.

You shave your hair,

Please I need to feel like myself again.

A high functioning sleepwalker,

A corporate slave no more.

When they leave,

You put their pictures in the display.

You must not forget what came before,

The days you offered Miranda a smoke.

A museum, A Museum of Civilization.

It would be less painful to let go,

So hold on.

Terrible things have come from this airport,

You see traces of him in the people from the Symphony.

It is a refuge from his own evils,

A place of memories,

Station Eleven brings him back,

He wonders if ships are sailing again across the seas.

—

So many more still in this world,

Who survived somehow,

Against the odds.

A man who cared for his whole family,

They only survivor,

He wonders why he’s still alive.

He supposes he must be immune,

Would it be worse knowing you could have been a cure?

A girl who remembers little of the world from before,

She holds a paperweight,

From Clark to Miranda to Arthur to her.

She read Station Eleven,

She shares that with the prophet,

Did it mean as much to him?

A boy who knows about Star Trek,

Who remembers the loneliness before the fall.

He remembers air conditioning.

He remembers early hours in front of the TV.

He sits and prays for any dead he finds.

Why is he less alone in the apocalypse?

So many taken from this world,

Victims of probability,

They caught the odds.

A woman who finally had found herself,

Who was staying at a hotel.

The impact her comics would have on two survivors.

Did the doorman survive?

A playset in an empty house,

The only thing not covered in dust.

There was once a girl there,

Did she at least outlive her parents?

All those whose stories aren’t told here,

They die a second time.

Far too many lives to count,

What more could they have done if they had the time?

As a reader of this picked over world,

I must choose sympathy or apathy,

As the plague that nurtured me was not nearly so severe.

The world survived my disease,

But still emerged changed.

We all emerged changed.

-Rden

[heiserosandhesapollo]

"Untitled (11-6-23)" (2023)

transcription in alt text

[waiting-on-mars]

there's laundry to do and a genocide to stop.

by Vinay Krishnan

(Alt text available)

[skinnerhousebooks]

2020 was a year unlike any other. A year of masks and marches. A tale of two pandemics, COVID-19 and the deep-rooted pandemic of white supremacy and structural racism. Shelter in This Place, the 2021 volume of the inSpirit Series, is an anthology of poems, prayers, and reflections from Unitarian Universalists about their experiences of 2020—offered as a testament to our collective grit and grief, rage and resistance, love and loneliness. With readings that come from a variety of perspectives, identities, and geographies, Shelter in This Place captures the complex reality of 2020. And yet despite the grief and loss collected in these pages, the writers describe resilience and joy too. As we come to another anniversary of March 2020, may this book contain words that heal, comfort, and inspire you in the days ahead.

Shelter in This Place is available to order at inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop at shopinspirit.org.

[loresanhedonia]

Rampant 16 candles in isolation, 

Fire fades onto the empty space. 

I watch my father as he scraps for change,

My mother cries in rage. 

We want out, we want freedom 

We’re prisoners of our own space, 

Unwillingly caged. 

The urge to run, away from your gun

I’d get out of this city

If the microbes weren’t to harm. 

My youth is to fade, 

My body to wrinkle. 

I pray for your demise,

Ending your expansion. 

[irisbleufic]

I’d be in the hospital right now if not got being fully vaxxed and on Paxlovid, I’m pretty sure. There’s a poem in The Sting of It called “DNR” where I juxtaposed the fucking terrifying experience of having H1N1 (swine flu) in London in early 2011 with reading a letter one of my great-grandmothers wrote home from the hospital where she was treated for (and died from) tuberculosis. Signing my mom’s DNR order is mixed up in there, too; eerie now that she’s finally gone. All I can think of his how it felt to have H1N1 for 6 fucking weeks without benefit of a vaccine or any medication more useful than Lemsip, wondering how much worse than that my current situation would be without treatment. My fever was so high for a week of it that I was delirious; I remember repeating “I think I’m dying” pretty often during that week. Aside from the colon cancer wringer of 2.5-3 years ago, swine flu was the sickest I’d ever been. The sheer awareness that my current COVID situation could be so much worse is just…I don’t know, bad flashbacks. They’re keeping me awake to the point I didn’t sleep till 4am last night. I’m afraid to fall asleep. I keep thinking about that poem, how the ghosts I captured in it haunt me even after the attempted exorcism of writing.

(The closer I’ve gotten to death in my four decades of life, the more I fight to live. 2012-me is floored by how much more was to come, how much more fight I have left.)

[scardecourcier]

#CovidPoetry

One fucking trip to the emergency vet Was avoiding going outside but I'd do it for my pet One December outing turned a whole life around You'll be fine, just a virus, just rest up and you'll be sound.

"You look so well though" but I can't climb stairs Been in pain my whole life but this tips past what I can bear Male doctors give me sideeye like I'm tryna misbehave Body flaring in reactions, can't eat anything I crave.

I think I had a brain once, can't remember where I put it Had confidence before but these experiences have shook it I'm not sure if I can meet you, not sure how long I can stay Dunno what energy I'll bring until it all gets snatched away

But we're four years beyond it, so it's over now, right? Tubes are rammed, buses jampacked, bars are full up every night Yes I'd love to come and see you, love to party, now you ask, But I still can't go outside cuz you won't WEAR A FUCKING MASK.

[poetryandfootnotes]

Covid in Australia 2020

The virus has spread,

It has invaded our shores.

‘Girt by sea’

Doesn’t protect us anymore.

Before it was a distant problem,

Wuhan stats on a page.

Something to interrupt our travel plans,

Noise on the world stage.

We held our breath that it would spare us,

but it is no longer a stranger.

It is spreading through our nation,

Our elderly most in danger.

We are learning to socially distance,

We are trying to stay at home.

Washing our hands diligently,

Keeping connected on the phone.

We are receiving mixed messages,

Schools are open - but please don’t go!

The pandemic becomes secondary to economics,

Countries scared their money won’t grow.

They attempt to balance the fear and the panic,

But they all fall into the same trap.

We are too slow to make changes,

sadly there will be no going back.

There will be countless lives lost,

There will be behavioural change,

Peoples mental health with suffer,

All on the world stage

The virus doesn’t discriminate

Everybody is in danger

Religion, race or gender

Is irrelevant to this new stranger.

[auggietopia]

i started this blog in december 2019. it was the first tumblr i was ever truly active on, and i had no idea how tags or anything worked. i was freshly 16 and at the age where i was just starting to discover who and what i was, and a lot of it came through in the poetry i posted here. i had very rigid ideas of what literature and poetry was, as i had stopped doing it for a very long time. i wanted attention. i was eager, although i didnt know it then. i was hopeful.

covid hit three months later, in march 2020. i was in the year group whose gcses were cancelled. i posted one poem right as covid hit, in march, and then my last poem i posted in september of 2020 around when i started sixth form, after the longest summer i will ever have in my life. it was also the best summer i have had in my life. i spent 5 months calling with my best friends so constantly to the point i woke up at 6pm and went to bed at 9am just to talk to them. i realised my identity and tried to come out to a mother i would quickly find out was transphobic. i made a lot of friends. i started to gain some real footing on who i was.

i blinked and i am in march 2024. it is four years and a few days since i posted my second to last poem, which is a number that feels truly shocking to type out as it feels like it has been a year at most. in 2019 i turned 16, but in 2024 i will turn 21. this fact upsets me as the absolute formative amount of ageing i went through between the ages of 13-16 feels like it was my entire life and that there isnt room for anything else worthwhile to occur. on my 18th birthday, i held the frog teddy i bought for myself and listened to lord huron at full volume to block out the fear blurring its way into the edges like a migraine. on my 19th birthday, i was alone and terrified in my university dorm. i can't even remember my 20th birthday because of how insignificant it was. ageing, past the age of 18, went from being something exciting to something terrifying in a way i told myself it never would. and yet i am still here, and yet i still age. in a few months, it will be my 21st, and it will likely be at home, and it will likely be alone.

in the space between 16 and now, a lot happened. there were some pretty good things. they sit tiny next to the fact i lost my best friend in 2021 because they turned out to be quite literally the worst person i have ever known on this planet. i will never forgive them for what they did. realistically, every problem i hold against them is so small in the scale of the universe that maybe it isn’t worth holding onto at all, but i have not learned that lesson. i am aggressively refusing that lesson, in fact. at least for right now.

my mental health also took the biggest nosedive it has ever taken. sixth form shut down all sense of self discovery i had once i begin to nosedive in my academics and lose all of my friends. i still havent regained my footing. it has been 2 years since i left sixth form, and i still havent regained my footing.

but it is nice to look back over this blog and not regret a single thing i wrote.

all of this is to say i am going to start posting here again. and, in the most cliche way possible, i am going to do it for me this time. and i am going to post whatever i want without caring whether or not it is refined enough, because life is scarily fleeting and i can do whatever i want.

i was first allergictodrowning, and when i thought that was stupid i became autumndrowns, and now i will be something else that i havent decided yet but it will definitely be equally as stupid. :)