Lockdown Letdown or Variations on Mark 5. 1-20
The pandemic has gone on for a long time now. People are tired. Bone tired. Resilience has run down. Some have lost work or are living in the fear of doing so. Although we know that many of the issues are complex and cannot be solved rapidly or easily, we still lose patience. In addition to our own struggles, we go online only to see the struggles of others. Their frustrations and angst are expressed or even ranted, looking for a home. Some of their angst gets transferred on to the accumulation of our own. While walking I caught this transfer happening to me. Then this happened.
Why do you want to heal me?
Who am I?
Legion
There are many of us
Faces like mine
Mirrored here
And there
And everywhere.
We are isolated and locked down
Nowhere to go
Let us out!
We can only walk or run
Around the same blocks
So many times.
We want to go to
The footy
The club
The gym
The church.
We want to hoon around
In our cars
Like bloody bogans
Terrorising old ladies
And little children
And the frazzled nerves
Of sequestered parents
Invigilating “online learning”.
We want to be out in the streets
Bawling and shouting
“My rights! My rights!”
We don’t care if we get the virus
As we’re dying in here anyhow.
Don’t try to make us feel bad
By talking of Afghanis who
Dream of being able to exercise rights
Or of earthquake affected Haitians
Who don’t have homes to have a lockdown.
We can’t fix them!
We want to be keyboard warriors
Or serve salvos of the seething stew
Boiling in our bile.
Give us our vaccination yesterday!
We are programmed consumers
And we want our product already!
Give us those police and politicians.
Let us hurl our hate at them.
How dare they do not show up to the press
Every. Single. Day.
Why should they rest?
We don’t!
Or aren’t!
Or can’t!
Let us release all our hate
On them!
Let them be
Our scapegoats
Our herd of swine
Cast into the drowning foment.
Take our torment!
Take it!
Take….
It’s … It’s… Gone?
It’s gone!
I’m free
I don’t have to lockdown
My heart
My reason
My soul
I’m free.
Simon C.J Falk 23 August 2021.
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