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2nd Quarantine
2nd Lockdown today Oct 24, 2020 we go back indoors like the 100 days of Spring I am retired now my only commitment the gym which closed for a month perhaps a year, so stock up and batter down prepare for another 100 or however-many the TV works, there's heat I'm lucky, I have some- one to hug, the one I'm with to love and I'm still angry all those kids met in squares at night and infected the country -- why can't you stay home? voluntarily, I'll show you how to suffer and feel proud to renounce human contact to feel ambivalent to watch films you don't follow feel guilty feel afraid to die die for something; die for nothing but not die to go skiing or get the fall fashions. The Bug It made so many remain in bed so much sufferance fever aches and diarrhea boils and bloody eyes the weak and old expired it came over the winter holidays ruining so many parties driving some to desperation on a spree of self-harm the cemeteries have no room left will it end soon like a storm or continue like a season? As if greed had crawled in an ear my children caught the bug or the bug caught them yet I knew they could not die not before visiting Big Sur watching ocean slam rocky shore waiting for the next wave knowing it will surely come yes, we still know things certainties, like machines like information except then we find, to our chagrin a bug in the system. Corona Virus, December 2019 (Covid-19) You can't get the plague from drinking Corona beer you can't get drunk either unless you really try like those ladies in Mexico City out in the streets so pretty smashing and bashing the patriarchy or wishing Uncle Joe could calm us down tell us everything will be all right, good night because if you're not spooked to coin a phrase, without clichés you're not paying attention not to Master Chef on the primaries or your personal ratings on your smart watch can't see your friends, can't see your family outside your own house where you can't bear anyone anymore anywhere when will the mall reopen, how can we go on without it the Mall of America, hell, the Mall is America shut us down take away our identity what's left? raging human animals before I check into Intensive Care with whatever nurses are left bending over me I want -- what do I want? to tell you I love you -- no; to finish my autobiography -- no; to drink fresh-squeezed orange juice -- no; I want to go outside radioactivity be damned hear that annoying magpie caw one more time feel the seabreeze on my cheeks one more time step in a puddle -- splash look at how the junipers grow straight and tall the black and white cat on the car roof look up -- the clouds are not keeping their distance could be a big storm gathering, they're too close, infecting one another -- I'd better go inside now and just remember these things. A guy put his hand on my shoulder in the just-opened gym, though it's normal I cringed in Covid psychosis tingled, warmed, and bristled the first touch in seven months only touch can give you a buzz a corona with lime and salt chips and deadly virus salsa on the side one pat, Mom called them love taps, one is enough to kill. Our spirit will recover or not from lack of stimulation through the laying on of hands the sacred touch of trust, trust of touch as in parents and grandparents not scoutmasters or P.E. teachers the good touch, the warm fuzzy hug therapy nobody's getting anymore -- we will all be wrecked for the rest of our lives. I walked seven miles without water once in high mountains, dehyd- ration affects the brain fluid so your body remembers the panic you drink whenever you drink when you're not thirsty you over-hydrate you can, in the hazy future will we cower away or huddle for human warmth once this is over to go onwards? -- please touch me / please don't touch me -- It's a dark day* I'm writing this in the dark I'm in a dark room (the bathroom) turn on the lights! I don't want to. dark as in what happens to computers and TVs when the juice goes out maybe you had too much on: iron oven, dishwasher, toaster, electric chair dark like a COVID patient on several machines on plenty of expensive drugs then the doctors give up, the body gives up, the curtain falls, the eyes slowly close -- wish I could hug my cat again, but she's gone too she was black, the color no one wants. Labyrinthitis I feel like I'm falling in perpetuity help me, backwards I stumble hoping to reach out for a hold I sit, that's no good I lie down and feel like I'm falling onto the ground if I lied on the ground I'd be diving back into another gravity di- mension. I deserve to fall because so I know how I've always tried to be good always be good never a scandal never a transgression bad only in my head oh so bad the Devil made me do it maybe I’m practicing for the big drop coming when all is revealed. I should stop resisting let the force do its thing slam against the marble table top on the way down head split open in two halves sweet watermelon juice running into the wood parquet leaving a goodbye note as quite a permanent stain. bio: E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over 40 years in eastern Sicily, where he taught English at the local university. His poetry appeared most recently in Ginosko, Metaworker, Triggerfish, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and Grey Sparrow Review among others. Martin is an alumnus of the Community of Writers. He has published two collections of haiku, Bitter Pills and Smart Pills, and a chapbook, Exile's Choice, just out from Kelsay Books. A full collection, Method & Madness, is forthcoming from Odyssey Press. Martin blogs at: https://emartinpedersenwriter.blogspot.com
Fevers of the Mind 