Corona Diary - May 2020
May brought increasing proof of our government’s utter incompetence. In America, Trump slid into total denial and began making a series truly insane suggestions. Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s key adviser and unelected power behind the ‘throne’ - having devised the lockdown - was caught flagrantly ignoring it himself. Johnson refused to sack him. He refused to go. The whole country realised our public school elite cared only for themselves. Johnson became a father and vanished again.Patronising overgrown schoolboys in the cabinet fronted the daily TV briefings with growing incompetence.
COME WHAT MAY
Living day-to-day. Virus here to stay.
Knowing we’re its prey. Pray we’ll be okay.
We’ll all die but I say delay the day.
So, statement, not a question: Come what May?
After life no afterlife: flesh then clay
Suddenly’s easy. Slow’s a lousy way.
Sod long lonely death stuck in some sickbay.
Awful April’s ending so come what May?
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POEM FOR MATT HANCOCK, HEALTH SECRETARY
Fiddle facts and figures, Matt,
Furthering this farce.
Pull your sound-bite triggers, Matt,
Covering your arse.
Twiddle with perceptions, Matt.
Twist the recent past.
Riddled with deceptions, Matt,
Truly you’re a blast.
But truth can’t be disguised, Matt,
Dismissed or denied.
No testing? Ill-advised, Matt.
That’s why thousands died.
Duck another question, Matt,
Mentioning the dead.
Just a small suggestion, Matt,
Admit you were misled.
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SECOND PEAK
In our empty cafes, pubs and clubs and schools
Covid waits, smiles and says: ‘Come back in, you fools.’
We’ll repay his patience. We’ll relax the rules.
We’ll reopen markets, libraries and pools.
Covid will multiply deaths and ghosts and ghouls.
Throughout vacant venues, airports, hotels, parks
Covid prowls with tiger-claws and teeth like sharks.
‘Soon they’ll return to me,’ he slyly remarks,
And his thin voice crackles like electric arcs.
Our there in the darkness, a startled dog barks.
In our empty restaurants, offices, shops,
In take-aways, trains and planes, and at bus stops,
Covid hides out of reach of bleach, soap and mops,
Needn’t speak, knows we’re weak, sees how our guard drops.
Lock-down’ll loosen. He’ll harvests human crops.
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YOUR LIFE UNDER LOCK-DOWN
You lose track of day and date
Do booze till you put on weight.
You snooze way past half past eight
View news, clocking each death-rate.
You cruise and procrastinate
Blue shoes, Elvis, music’s great.
You choose dishes to create
Do queues shopping: wait, wait, wait.
You bruise beaten by your mate
Knew dues paid just devastate.
You, whose future falls to fate
Brew views blaming those you hate.
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CARERS
Why care that life’s grown hard to bear?
Why care you’re rooted to your chair?
Why care that this just drives you spare?
Why care Corona’s everywhere?
Why care you’re scared to breathe the air?
Why care if you’ve not got a prayer?
Why care? Why care? Why care?
Why care about your body hair?
Why care about the clothes you wear?
Why care your home’s in disrepair?
Why care you hardly leave your lair?
Why care you only curse and swear?
Why care that this seems so unfair?
Why care? Why care? Why care?
Why care when caring’s really rare?
Why care the game is solitaire?
Why care that nothing’s yours to share?
Why care that you’re in deep despair?
Why care when you know no one’s there?
Why care about this whole nightmare?
Why care? Why care? Why care?
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ALMOST FORTY THOUSAND DEAD HERE IN BRITAIN ALONE
We hear your voice whining, you winger, you moaner.
You say that you’re pig-sick of being a loner.
Each radio station’s self-pitying phoner
Is there to chuck bricks like some biblical stoner.
You’ve premises shut for six weeks. You’re the owner.
You’re not making money, you selfish brain-donor.
They’ve graves in Milan and more in Barcelona.
They’ve corpses from New York to south Arizona.
These dead, though, don’t matter to you, our new Jonah,
Soon joined by each grunter and griper and groaner.
Pure profit paves pathways for each no-go zoner
To open for business and re-spread Corona.
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CLAPPING VERSES
Clap for doctors, carers, nurses.
Clap though more loss intersperses.
Clap the coffins and the hearses.
Clap when rising death reverses.
Clap those who survive these curses.
Clap more funds from public purses.
Clap the cures each lab rehearses.
Clap for safer universes.
Clap when Covid’s threat disperses.
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OH, A NATURE POEM!
Oh, but aren’t our western politicians smooth and smug?
Oh, the slimy trail that’s left by every single slug.
Oh, but soon we’ll all be fine. Just trust them. Touch and hug.
Oh, this spring is splendid. Sit and sun yourself, you mug.
Oh, I wish when asked of deaths they wouldn’t merely shrug.
Oh, how deep the hole that those burrowing beasts have dug.
Oh, we’re all in this together. Feel your heartstrings tug.
Oh, how hard it is to fend off every biting bug.
Oh, but what is nature when it’s money that’s the drug?
Oh, but here we are at home. We’re comfy, warm and snug.
Oh, what virus? Birdsongs choir us. We’re all in a fug.
Oh, the leaves on plants and trees! The view’s a bright green rug.
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OF COURSE WE MISS…
Summer beaches
Handshake reaches
Sharing peaches
What life teaches
But not…
Terrorist threats
Mosquito nets
Paying our debts
Public toilets
Of course we miss…
Outdoor events
Sensual scents
Festival tents
Foreign accents
But not…
Shave underarm
Anti-Islam
Simper and smarm
Morning alarm
Of course we miss…
Nights in the pub
Working Men’s Club
Curry-house grub
Reggae ‘n’ dub
But not…
Appointments missed
Things-to-do list
All alone pissed
And the dentist.
Of course we miss…
Good hotel staff
Having a laugh
Food from a caf
Jokes that are naff
But not…
Motorway queues
More Brexit news
The wrong tattoos
Shit on our shoes.
LESSONS
I’m leaving my lockdown retreat.
It’s night. You hear my pounding feet.
They beat on tarmac, flags, concrete.
I stride, repeat. I stride, repeat…
Somehow me and the microbe meet
Up on the corner of our street.
We step back, distance, nod and greet,
Use guarded words. We’re both discrete.
His monotone pours clipped and neat
To ring like rain on metal sheet.
I think of butchery and meat,
A restaurant which serves defeat.
We’ve Covid entering to eat.
The chef is turning up the heat.
But nothing lessens. Take a seat.
We live through days left incomplete.
Think language ladled sickly-sweet
And thickly larded with deceit.
We’ve deaths as dense as winter sleet.
Our virus picks up the receipt.
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THEY MAKE NO SENSE
Hey! Okay, ladies, okay, gents,
Go back to work, you malcontents
As pawns in your own government’s
New viral risk experiments.
You’ve ministers. They make no scents.
They flash dumb numbers and percents
Till hopes decay by increments
To leave what life misrepresents.
We’re fed false facts. Each voice invents
Its sins as if set in cements.
The lies lie clear though none repents.
Our fight-back’s what this circumvents.
Here’s where pure thoughtlessness ferments
And brews mere nods and blind assents.
So sense explodes. It’s bomb fragments
On trains tight-packed, like mass events.
As war-dead, they’d be regiments.
With records, badges, documents,
Our lives allowed our loud laments.
It’s peacetime, though, so truth torments.
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MIXED MESSAGES
They don’t though they do, and they won’t though they will
Soon stop or start testing the are or aren’t ill.
They say down to me yet they say up to you.
We won’t so we will, and we don’t so we do.
Aware and alert to where viruses lurk.
We were staying home, now - knee-jerk - back to work.
Two metres apart till packed buses and trains.
We’ll lose use of lungs by not using our brains.
It’s all straightforward, in a roundabout way
When weighing which meaning they never quite say
While switching the weight of their words every day.
That’s roundabout forward but not a straight say.
Like Nightingales opened so that they could close.
Like do and don’t mask both your mouth and your nose.
Changes to changes to rules and to choices.
Lies, contradictions and misleading voices.
We’ve had quite enough of this duffness and guff
And blather and bluff and all similar stuff.
Grant us, we beg you, this opportunity…
Let us acquire whole heard immunity.
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LANDSCAPES BY HIERONYMUS BOSCH
We’re picturing scenes which this virus requires
Of tormented souls writhing in rolling shires
With agonies, corpses and funeral pyres
The whole of it floodlit by flames from those fires.
These sights are more hellish than Hogarth satires.
They’ve demons all dancing with dead priests and friars
On bodies of peasants and merchants and squires
While devils throw townsfolk from towers and spires.
Plague visions like these in which all life expires
As once declaimed by Mediaeval town criers
Seemed long since abandoned to history’s mires
But bounce back because we’re led by fools and liars.
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TELL JOHNSON AND TRUMP WE’RE NOT AT WAR
It has always seemed somewhat spurious
When wars end, that those deemed ‘victorious’
Have labelled their mass deaths as glorious.
So, here’s something even more curious…
No way is this pandemic war-ious,
Its lonely deaths slow and laborious.
Small wonder so many are furious.
War rhetoric’s crass and injurious.
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SHORT SENTENCES
Stuck in lockdown week on week.
It’s no game, this hide-and-seek.
You soon sense you start to freak.
Don’t we all? You’re not unique.
Weather forecast stalls on bleak.
All the timbers start to creak.
Ship seems like it’s sprung a leak.
Whole world’s on a losing streak.
Pews unused in God’s boutique.
Faith says turn the other cheek.
Some dumb stuff about the meek.
Virus decimates the weak.
Governed by this dodgy clique.
Info’s Double Dutch or Greek.
Can and can’t work, meet or speak.
We do. Deaths rise. Second peak.
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FIVE LINKED LIMERICKS
This virus for which there’s no cure
Has sure made the world insecure.
In one killing bout
It’s now taken out
A third of a million or more.
Me, though, I’m chilled to the marrow
That Britain’s this lone wheelbarrow
Being pushed up Plague Road,
Our dead as its load,
By old boys from Eton and Harrow.
Global should be our polemic
To fight this fearful pandemic.
Yet Johnson’s like Trump,
A go-alone gump,
Dumb, when we need academic.
Bad now but the next time far worse,
The virus, I mean, not my verse.
If you’re infected
And it’s detected
Sod limericks. Get to a nurse.
Corona has started to pack.
He’s planning a break from this flak.
He’s scribbled a note
And here’s what he wrote:
‘Stay safe, all. In Autumn I’m back.’
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BECAUSE OF OUR IMPATIENCE
Covid returns by train again
By cruise ship and by plane again
We’ve outbreaks to contain again
As even more are slain again
Deaths enter that fast lane again
At speeds that are insane again
From Brisbane to Bahrain again
Ukraine to Bloemfontein again
In Britain and in Spain again
For Finn and Swede and Dane again
A U.S. hurricane again
As we see Trump abstain again
All contact to constrain again
Mass lockdowns to maintain again
And business down the drain again
And all that fear and pain again
Familiar refrain again
As ministers explain again
And go against the grain again
Their reasoning inane again
And when we all complain again
Excuses drop like rain again
More half-baked plans are lain again
While we fight back in vain again
Against the viral strain again
Which bounces back again, again… again, again, again…
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RE-OPENING SCHOOLS THE WEEK AFTER NEXT?
Education, education, education.
It’s a mantra that returns like constipation
And is greeted with bemused exasperation.
Our dictators issue it like rote dictation.
“Back to school, the first of June,” their proclamation.
Education, education, education.
It’s their lack of it that’s causing consternation,
Their decision reached devoid of consultation.
Pack the playgrounds so our youngest generation
Can be rashly used to test viral gestation.
“Send ’em back! Send ’em back! Send ’em back!”
Fifty years ago, they used to chant that cack,
Only, then it was about repatriation.
Education, education, education.
Teach the virus to re-learn its germination.
Give it lessons in its own multiplication
From the classroom to the wider population
Spelling out the re-infection of our nation.
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A WEEK OF GARDENING DURING LOCKDOWN
Day one: you wonder whether to prune that rose.
Day two: you think of using the garden hose.
Day three: you’re aghast just how fast the grass grows.
Day four: you’ll mow the lawn soon, so you suppose.
Day five: your open gate really needs to close.
Day six: the sun shines and a gentle breeze blows.
Day seven: you sit out, doze, and the day just goes.
WHILE I’M OUT WALKING WITH MY BLOODY MUTT
I’m out walking. I would be happy but
Nowhere’s open. I do my bloody nut.
All the bloody pubs are still bloody shut
So’s MacDonald’s and bloody Pizza Hut.
I’m out walking. Down sunny streets I strut.
They’re dead as hell. That gets my bloody gut.
Total dearth where I want a bloody glut.
Newsagents can’t even sell bloody smut.
I’m out walking. Sport’s off. I’m in a rut.
No goals, no runs, no pot or bloody putt.
The barber’s closed, so no bloody haircut.
Gregg’s shut. God! I want a bloody doughnut.
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WISH LIST
I wish we had a government which didn’t cause offence.
I wish we had a government whose policies made sense.
I wish we had a government not prone to pure pretence.
I wish we had a government with leadership less dense.
I wish we had a government that read the evidence.
I wish we had a government worth pounds instead of pence.
I wish we had a government wrought in the present tense.
I wish we had a government with more intelligence.
I wish we had a government not sold on self-defence.
I wish we had a government less fixed on the expense.
I wish we had a government whose care was more intense.
I wish we had a government whose lies were less immense.
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NORMAL
Normal? Take us back to that
Getting out of house or flat
Spending less time with the cat
Giving teachers back our brat.
Normal’s without caveat
Open door and welcome mat
Meet the neighbour, stop and chat
Gossip, hearsay, chew the fat.
Normal’s not some bureaucrat
It’s just where we once were at
9 to 5 and all that tat
Mates who tell you you’re a twat.
Normal’s where I’d hang my hat
Pay my way and pay the VAT
Hairdresser and laundromat
Cafe, pub and cricket bat.
Normal’s not this new format
Banged up like some caged lab rat
Spending night on night just sat
Trapped inside your habitat.
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DOUBTERS’ CREED
We’ll stick with herd immunity
And live in cattle-sheds.
We’ll give up on community
And just take to our beds.
We’ll break rules with impunity
And act like knuckleheads.
We’ll fracture in disunity
And rip roadmaps to shreds.
We’ll miss each opportunity
And turn down tests and meds.
We’ll act with importunity
And dance while Covid spreads.
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A POEM ABOUT YOU, DOMINIC CUMMINGS
You set the rules for us to bear
But you don’t toe that line.
For common people: common fare.
You self-indulgers dine.
Pick up a lie like an éclair.
Drink arrogance like wine.
.
You travel here, there, everywhere
As if your right’s divine.
It’s privilege, and you’re the heir.
You’re selfish by design.
You’d have us wash your underwear
When you should just resign.
You’d let us breathe infected air
So long as you were fine.
You’re scum. You’re numb cos all you care
About is thee and thine.
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CAREHOME GHOSTS SPEAKING
Our problem was identified.
Their phones rang. Nobody replied.
Nothing we needed was supplied.
With figures altered, blame denied,
We were quietly pushed aside
By those on whom we’d all relied.
They didn’t act. Meanwhile we died
Like flies sprayed by insecticide.
Where do their consciences reside?
Government’s heartless underside:
‘Our ring of care’, they later lied
And claimed ‘the science’ was their guide.
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PRESS CONFERENCE
You mumble
And grumble
And bumble
And fumble
And jumble
And crumble
And stumble
And tumble.
Never humble, you.
We rumble you.
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JOHNSON’S LATEST BABY
‘World-beating!’
It’s not a race.
Months too late
They’ve put in place
Test, track, trace.
Dodgy deal
On unsound base,
Cobbled at
A frantic pace,
Test, track, trace.
Far from what
We’ll all embrace.
No time left,
Though, to replace
Test, track, trace.
System weak,
No style, no grace,
Fishy as
A plaice or dace,
Test, track, trace.
Distantly,
Not face-to-face,
Ill-equipped
For case-by-case
Test, track, trace.
Un-enforced,
Can’t check or chase.
Isle-of-Wight
Proved far from ace.
Test, track, trace.
World-beating?
Or world disgrace?
Baby-face
Gives a grimace.
Test, track, trace.
Will it work?
Just watch this space.
Chances are
We’ll soon misplace
Test, track, trace.
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ANTICIPATION
On the wall next to our side-door
Are two white boxes.
One contains our gas meter,
The other our electricity meter.
The two have been thus separated
since this house was built.
That was thirty years ago.
All that time, they’ve waited.
Now that the pandemic’s arrived,
They’re normalized.
They remain two meters apart,
Just as we now do.
WE
Although Cummings hasn’t gone,
Johnson tells us to move on…
We the people of this nation
We who’ve dealt with desperation
We who stuck in one location
We will not move on.
We who’ve gone through isolation
We hard-sold miscalculation
We deprived of preparation
We will not move on.
We short-changed with devastation
We hide-bound by legislation
We force-fed falsification
We will not move on.
We through hardship and privation
We who long for vaccination
We not prone to deviation
We will not move on.
We not fooled by fabrication
We not here for your dictation
We with higher expectation
We will not move on.
We withheld investigation
We with cause for consternation
We see through this situation
We will not move on.
We who’ve walked through death’s damnation
We brim-full of accusation
We say with no hesitation
We will NOT move on.
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POEM FOR MY PARTNER
This lockdown life is losing sense.
As hidden price becomes expense
We think too much. These nights grow tense
And old disruptions recommence.
The simplest words can cause offence
And bring things to the boil, and hence
Like steam, emotions soon condense,
Turn sensitive to self-defence.
Our inner worlds now seem immense
While out beyond our garden fence
We see no trees. The wood’s too dense
And pounds go while we count the pence.
Our love is real. The rest’s pretence.
This poem’s yours. It’s frankincense.