Look away look away
People talk about death these days as though it was a threat, a promise, a consequence of, a punishment for. A badly made bargain. Better house arrest than a coffin, better absolute isolation than turn, turn again helpless, on an ICU bed. Better beggary, lining up for hand outs allowed to you, than ending. Better breathing back your own food smells, subverting breath's need to exhale through your sweaty, your slipping down mask, hours into your masked working everyday, Better that... than chancing infection. Better not looking in somebody's face, than suffer the small dislocation, the instant impression of facelessness? Subliminal strangeness. Better not stare at the jaws outlined by the face cloth, all massive, receding, unsmiling bone, than slip a notch more on the rope from all that was decent and normal.
Close down your poor ears
Better not hear the dissenters, deniers, contrarians, they being, all being, far rightists, covidiots, something like that. Better not hear; for a thing once heard is hard to un-hear as you're walking the line. When you're marching in tandem, line dancing, warmed at the hearth of inclusion. Better not hear (I can't hear you) else a coffin awaits you.
and no need to think about Science is Science...
Better not think: or aspire to know better than Nephet, or doctors or science, least people will die. You will make people die. Better not read, or consider, the terrible story being told, Better not question...what's told to you... eyes straying over the contrary articles, videos, doctors dissenting the light of hysteria, resolve in their eyes. Factually fake stuff awaiting to trap the unwary, seduce the too careless down paths of heretical, just isn't possible, alternate facts... that way waits a shroud.
oh why would you speak!
Better not speak: give a voice to a doubt, a stray thought, a discrepancy, ah would you upset and perplex the dear people, your family, the neighbours, all stumbling though Measures, down shop isles, strung out along paths, county roads as they mumble through masks, use their words, about pulling together, and when will it end... Better far better admire all the face masks, the blue ones, the flowers masks, pretty masks, black masks, the ones in the gutter, the ones cradling chins, slipping down below noses, impeding the eye-line.
Don't speak! least you send a dear heart to the coffin, you murder the vulnerable, hasten the end of all things.
most secret and shameful pleasures
Better not see though you saw, oh you did, the young, partying just down the road, the neighbours, out laughing in groups on the green, the call of the seagulls, the screams of delight from your kids on the beech back in August, your women friends chilling and laughing together in somebody's garden last week, how the coppery leaves fly out spinning in front you walking these days in the fields, those times thinking nothing, of covid, or dying, or measures, that dream of your throat stretched open and screaming, your breath given back to the universe, hands holding hands in a circle of randomers, lit by the moon.
Better not better not better not better....
hear daily the death rates, infection rates, something called R rates,... You will see you will hear you will speak. You will play your part and you will do your bit, you will ...come together in this marvellous collaborative WILL to eradicate Virus. Infection, disease. And all death.
