Mardi Gras

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

Mardi Gras

Marching down Bourbon Street

Squeezed together like canned pears

Revelry and joy on every face

Music prancing in the open air

Hiding beneath the smiling faces

Beneath the carnival of light

Beneath the gaiety and laughter

Looms a creature of the night

N’Orleans at Mardi Gras

A mob with the mind of one

A throbbing mass of movement

Singing dancing beating their drums

Sweating bodies pressed together

Sacrificing every morsel of restraint

Collapsing in the depths of night

Embracing the glory of the saints

They pack their bags and travel home

As the enemy beyond our sight

Hiding deep within their pleasure

Will soon become a global blight

Diversions

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

Diversions

Invent games and story lines

Find patterns where none exist

Start rumors concerning strangers

Create multiple personalities

Troll movie stars

Long conversations with deities

Laughter with the devil

Cloud jumping from the moon

Playing chess with Kasparov

All those days so long ago

when every waking dream

was followed by

If I only had the time

Now we understand

We never have the time

Time has us

The Daily Report (#9)

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

The Daily Report (#9)

They stroll to the cameras daily

Touching their solemn faces

Standing within the danger zone

No masks no gloves no cares

What do they know that we do not know?

Is the invisible menace reserved for

those on this side of the lenses?

Their words become a drone

We can no longer hear them

Cannot decipher the code

Is this a new symptom?

Are we suffering from failure to heed

warnings we can no longer hear?

The man in the orange mask

tells us it’s over

Number nine number nine

The man with an itch

tells us it’s not

Number nine number nine

Who should we believe?

Who lives and who dies?

Number nine number nine

The Absence

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

The Absence

You know but you do not know

You cannot know until it knocks you down

And leaves you dazed and grasping

Like a stray cat in a deep dark hole

My friend who drove his bike

Three hundred miles in blinding wind

and bitter cold for treatments

he could not receive at home

Another who worked hard for a living

Until his spine gave way

Who knows more pain every day

Than I will feel in a lifetime

My sister who went up against

The old boys club for thirty years

Who stared them down and won

My brothers who have been to the point

Of oblivion who balanced on a ledge

And fought their way back again

The younger ones who even now

Are welcoming new life into this strange

and unkind world

My friends family and loved ones

Whom I have always taken for granted

Who were always there when I needed them

I feel their absence now

Like a severed limb

Like a home without furniture

Like a story without end

Like a journey without a destiny

I feel the absence now

Like a stone in my hollow soul

At Your Door

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

At Your Door

When it happens to someone else’s child

Someone else’s mother or father

It remains a thought without true feeling

An inconvenience a minor bother

 

But when it closes in to circle you

When it touches those you know and love

Then it cracks your very core

It gets real when it’s at your door

 

It stuns when it comes in naked numbers

You fill with rage as it strikes you dumb

The sheer volume knocks you to the floor

But it gets real when it’s at your door

 

It is one thing when death has a number

It’s another when it has a face

The heart demands: what is it for?

It gets real when it’s at your door

Privacy

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

Privacy

Living a solemn life

Away from the chattering crowd

The walls have ears and eyes

The watcher becomes the watched

Our private lives are dead and gone

How did it happen? Why?

It’s for our own good

Too many fools endanger us all

We all nodded we understood

But when the shadow passes

And normal lives resume

We will regret the day this happened

When our privacy was doomed

I remember when old folks said

My life is an open book

But Big Brother wasn’t alive then

To open it up and take a look

Morning

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

Morning

I gaze at sunrise on the eastern horizon

I absorb the graceful promise it holds

Every trial and every nightmare must end

For in the light of the sun the flower unfolds

We have endured unbearable hardships

Faced down unbeatable odds

We would fight hordes of the fiercest demons

If it would lead to the home of the gods

They say it’s darkest before the dawn

And we suspect it’s true

The day will come when again we spell

The word morning without a U

We have to be patient

We have to be strong

But in truth we do not know

If in fact we’ll live that long