Outside little moves

save for divorced foxes

corner-of-eye birds

and abandoned face masks

breathing in a confident breeze

indoors TVs cover walls

broadcasting shows

of people who used to be famous 

for being used to be famous

but he's safe here he thinks

high above the plain

of the Great Pandemic

the lifts still work

he doesn't remember the last time

he travelled in them

though each Friday he waits

at the gaping shaft

for food parcels from the charity

whose appeals fall on his deaf ears

charity begins and stays at home

he disposes of his waste in bags

that plummet to a ridge of refuse

hundreds of feet below

putrefying as the scavengers

consume what can be digested

he hasn't paid a bill for some time

but no one is collecting the rent

in the mid distance of his binoculars

giant cacti impale curious virus-finches

on their honed horned armoury

the TVs only offer repeats these days

his favourites are complete football matches

in empty stadia with added crowd noise

among the few times 

he hasn't heard racist taunts

at such so-called sporting events

these repeats

these repeats

these repeats

these repeats

A disease that largely affects the elderly

now they're targeting the young

as they too are succumbing to the virus

and could pass it on to old people

as they enjoy newly relaxed freedoms

"don't kill Granny"

the latest deadly catchphrase

in a whole literature of them

and on the subject of our grandparents

over 20,000 people died of Covid-19 

in care homes in the UK

despite Public Health England

stating in February 2020 that

the pandemic was unlikely to affect

that sector and despite the "ring of steel"

the Secretary of State for Health

claimed had been installed in order 

to safeguard our most vulnerable

those who could not escape

and who deserved every respect

and every layer of protection

we needed lions

we got chocolate fireguards

and as for face masks

does my bum look big in mine?

it's getting harder to choose

as at least two industries

have developed alongside

the possible need to wear them

one is the creative attempt

to inject jazz into accidental genocide

through a multitude of designs

in an effort to turn a feel bad time

into something like a feel a little better time

the other industry is somewhat older

it's the one that's lining the pockets

of friends of the Tory party who laughably

describe themselves as a Government

you know the same ones who ordered

55 million masks that were not 

suitable for use by the NHS

I don't suppose they even tried

to get a refund on our tax-payers' money

(Jeff Bezos

Mark Zuckerberg

Tim Martin

Sir Phillip Green

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Alan Sugar)

he sees them on the TV 

reads about them in news apps 

he declines to subscribe to 

he thinks they're contemptible 

and wouldn't urinate on them if they caught fire

all vocal

all opinionated

all money grabbing modern style barons 

with no shame or few scruples

the unacceptable faces of capitalism

the unacceptable faces of humans

three of them are titled

wonder what the Queen really thinks about that

when he’s tired he thinks “titles”

reads a little like  “titties”

maybe he needs new spectacles

maybe he needs a new world

where wealth and health

are distributed more equally

Please keep your distance

I don’t want to catch anything from you

and I'm sure you feel the same way

staying indoors like a rained-off

summer holiday but this time

with endless advice on

how to fill our days as if

we can't be trusted to function

outside the tethered thinking

of workplace diktats

I tell you how I will spend my time

I will memorise the confusion

incompetence and untruths

that have led to this moment

while I fashion my response

among the sawdust of my lockdown lock-up

I will weaponise a disarticulated 

wooden garden chair leg

convert it into a crude war club

a coup stick for future skirmishes

over toilet paper and chocolate digestives

sand it a little

scrape a chisel along its length

adorn it with smart black Gorilla tape

and a libation of teak oil

a camouflaged and concealed weapon 

that still looks like a chair leg

as that was what it was made to be

ordinary domestic now deadly

like any household object

I choose it because its shape presents 

itself to me from among 

the other fractured wood

the flotsam of my materialism

because I assess that I might need it

to defend myself in the resistance

against the unelected 

super rich rulers of the world

the "supremacists"

the dark money and dirty companies

In the pews

mouths open

to out spew

the hymns

known off by hearts

in heaving chests

the rote

the rota

the cheeks

redenned and

redeemed

corrugated teeth

framed by yellowed collars

and furtive eyes

on servant girls

and recent widows

this interior world is shadow

and that which inhabits

its shade

the weight of the Bible

its brass clasp keeping

the colour pictures

of faraway places tight

until the right moment

the envy

the avarice

so many reputations at stake

in Adam's grove

where Lucifer takes over

the sêt fawr

sitting side by side

with the faithful

as the Word is heard

but no longer received

(sêt fawr-great pew)

If someone says the word "unprecedented"

one more time I will not be held accountable

for what comes next

what about the Spanish Flu

the Black Death and other plagues

including the Bible ones?

did they not happen?

did they "unhappen"?
~

does no one read history books any more

and did no one look at what was happening

in China in these supposedly connected times?

what about those warnings from the World Health Organisation?

are we no longer a part of the world?

do we think that we exist in a bubble

and that nothing or no one will burst it?

what about our own scientific community?

what were they thinking or couldn't they agree?

and why is there always a "lag" 

in official data on weekends

can't they rota staff to give a 

24/7 pandemic

24/7 coverage 

in the information world

as figures received on Tuesdays sometimes jar?

where are we on those charts 

those peaks and troughs of our lives 

our deaths?

why don't we learn anything any more 

particularly now that we really

do have something to learn from?

it's almost as though our minds 

are erased as we sleep 

making everything appear unprecedented

as it's harder to have a viable past this way

I want my past even if I don't always like it

On twenty two consecutive days

in April 2020

over 1,000 people died 

of Covid-19

in my country

though Ministers daily

downplayed this abomination

with figures of three digits

my country

in need of care

though you wouldn't know it

from the way it is treated

by its careless rulers

those leaders that morph into

cheap game show hosts

Brylcreemed

three digits

knowing winks 

and prizes you can't use

my country

a bump on the earth

a thing of beauty

radiating from the smiles

that come gladly to the faces

of the low paid and short changed

I applaud them

I applaud anyone

who has not swallowed

the lies attached to the events

of these rariefied days

as the undertakers work overtime

and the monumental masons

inscribe new stanzas

on the Avenues of Tombs

Munching a Crunchie bar 

he splutters as the daily death figures

don't come down quickly enough for him

when the total reaches 44,000*

he starts to feel a bit like 

it's Medieval days again

only this time with apps 

that don't always deliver 

and the act of dying more private

splutter splutter

mutter mutter

stutter stutter

he gets restless as the deaths

are now at least twice the amount

the scientists said would be 

an acceptable outcome not so long ago

who can you believe?

who can you trust?

thank God for TV remotes

pity they can't switch off his mind too 

and those of the others

though at times he thinks

even this is debatable

the weather suddenly 

turns cold windy and damp 

unsettling and depressing

a summer bypassed

he feels a shiver in his t shirt

remaining resolutely sun-worshipping

despite the evidence

*insert your own country's figures or update the UK figure if so inclined

He dreams of capital cities 

the pyramids of money 

the cut-price labour that raised them

now laid off

in quarantine

blacked out

streets 

avenues 

squares 

lanes 

the underground 

and overground railway tracks

emptied

no children at play 

no vehicles in motion 

parked forever

a sky reprieved

and exonerated

is reflected in lakes

fountains and tributaries

where fish nervously return

and dolphins are anticipated

sea eagles ravens and sparrows 

rule the high buildings 

their glass blue 

in the reconditioned atmosphere

quaking in expectation

learning to breathe again

sleeping cities

are secret cities

how conurbations are effaced

stifled by their inattention

buried under their obese ambition

as sleep comes to his dream

and the dreamt citizens

of the pestilent civilization

the last supermoon of the year

a flower moon

blossoms over a trembling stillness

and the lights are still on 

The much vaunted app that seems 

to be no longer so vaunted if at all

the commitments that wither

almost as soon as they're uttered

the NHS Track and Trace tsar

a baroness who had formerly been

the chief executive of a telecoms company 

when there was a breach of thousands 

of its customers' data

and who left with a full year's salary

of £550,000 despite working 

only two months of that financial year

and who as a Jockey Club board member

argued against cancelling the Cheltenham Festival 

as Coronavirus cantered towards us

allowing a quarter of a million people

to congregate 

be socially very near to one another

and then disseminate over a wide area

potentially spreading the infection

with all that that mundane but grave phrase implies

our democracy 

still led and misled

by an aristocracy

the lie of modernity 

trapped in a form of feudalism 

until the hoodwinked citizens

of Albion call it a day and decide 

that they don't wish to work 

for such baronial employers any more 

and learn to print their own money

as our rulers essentially have always done

and what of those highly qualified and experienced 

scientific and medical officers

who are suddenly absent 

from Downing Street presentations

where they had provided a degree

of much-needed wisdom and caution

a level-headedness amid the madness

of months of growing terror

and a collapsing economy?

is this because they had not given 

in to the requests to back  

Dominic Cummings

over his lockdown meandering?

or had they somehow done themselves

out of their own jobs by allowing

their expertise to rub off on Ministers 

in a process of osmosis by the mere act 

of standing two metres from humans

who previously held experts in contempt?

Dexamethasone is a steroid hailed

in June as an important discovery

in tackling the disease

following a complex trial

(“the world’s biggest”)

that involved 175 UK hospitals

Spain had been successfully using

this inexpensive and well known medicine 

for this type of treatment since February

yes Spain

a country in Europe

in our world 

and not in outer space 

not beyond the gaze 

of our most powerful telescopes

the last time I checked

but then again they are foreigners

our professors seemed so pleased with the results

and any good news is to be lauded 

and applauded in this litany of bad news

but had they in effect reinvented the wheel?

importantly could an additional 4 to 5,000 lives

have been saved had it been introduced earlier?

meanwhile Macaque monkeys 

escape from an Indian laboratory 

with Covid-19 samples

a metaphor for our times