Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
Grow a Soul
Drums beat the death toll
Another soul cut free
Defenseless in the end
From that which can’t be seen
Isolate the carefree
Repudiate the vain
Who deign to stake a life
For petty selfish gain
Spoiled little wretches
Gambling weighted dice
Going to their parties
Caring not who pays the price
And to those feckless morons
Peddling lies that snare
Trippin’ up the innocent
How is it you don’t care?
Shame on you says mother
People aren’t to blame
Blindly unresolved you are
Staking lives on deadly games
Cease your senseless goings
Running rampant in our midst
Grow a soul or dig your hole
For you will not be missed
For mothers and their daughters
For friends and lovers lost
For sons and all their fathers
Get the hell back in your house!
4/7/20 © Amy McKenzie
Spring is the Reckoning
I’ve seen the lion
Of Norway’s winter
Soothed and gentled
By a promised bud
Birds sing possibility
An early spring to come
Nature lends her smile
To new life rising
Nothing here points
To chaos unfolding
Just quiet stillness
Reflected in dew
Framed in my mind
Lies an old picture
I fly as a bird
Untouched and free
Circling away
From my quarantine
There in my freedom
Awake in my dreaming
Conjuring a cure
For lingering souls
Back in my silence
I clap once again
More loved ones depart
Too suddenly gone…
One blossom emerges
Restoring this heart
Spring is the reckoning
For which I have longed
Amy McKenzie © 4.8.20
In the Silence
tribute to a teen that took her life during Covid
There is a moment in the silence
When I remember her…
That girl who lived for colorful days
Touching hearts with so much laughter
Possibility sang
Champions soared
She was one
“She could move mountains,” that’s what they said
She stood tall, undefeated
Undefeatable.
And then…
What then?
Some limiting beliefs wedged their way in
Found the cracks of her mind
An opening
Descending like locusts on her flowering
Feeding ancient pathogens
She followed their trail into dark despair
Yet there was nothing there
Not really
She might have escaped
She could have climbed back out
Back into the sunshine of her life
But there was no one there
To hold the other end
Her lifeline flailed like limpid sails on a sea
Becalmed
Unreachable
Unreached
And now she is gone
I remember her sometimes
That girl…
In the silence
5/4/20 © Amy McKenzie
Exhale for Humanity
Breathing in the aftermath
Somewhere a bridge between us
To reach across diversity
Even as the chaos binds
To stand as worthy soul-gineers
Fabricating possibility
With otherworldly clarity
Refusing this old paradigm
Aware we are the mirrors
In this carnival of mazes
Reflecting back unwittingly
The lie we told ourselves
Shatter the illusion
Cross the tides of time
Burrow deep within to find
We’re standing on the other side
Waiting to uncover
A pathway to forgiveness
Our empathy unfolding
A bridge to peace we build
Spanning all inequities
Breath in as another
And exhale for humanity
Amy McKenzie © 8.18.20
Miss McKenzie is the Managing Director of SHARING, a nonprofit humanitarian organization committed to helping people physically, financially, spiritually and emotionally.
Free to join, this platform helps people find and fund their life purpose by utilizing the global sharing economy and financial education they offer.
Amy’s professional career spans four decades as an actor, director and producer including off-Broadway, National Tours, Film, Television and Cabaret. In addition, Amy is an author, poet, speaker and HeartMath practitioner with certifications in Reiki, Rebirthing and Energy Restructure.
Her most cherished accomplishment is that her daughter is living a life she loves.
Los Angeles, CA
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