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.
First Published in North of Oxford Summer Pandemic Issue
Like a blind cave
brittle rib cage hosting the infection
an unwanted guest:
the virus opens its mouth
its glistening black teeth
in the dead of the night
devours everything
precious and beautiful
cleaves the life out of the soul
leaves you gasping;
with bated breath and a jarred mind
you are left alone
in a vacant mind
lying on the death bed
reminiscing the day love embraced you
around a summer bonfire
now loneliness bounces off
sepia-tinged walls
death draped in pristine
white sheets sitting
at the foot of the bed
scoops its share
masticating life
leaving you rotten
like an empty room with chipped off walls
forgotten and waiting for its due
vacant mind begets explanation
in the hollowness of the night
when the wheezing and choking
cleaves your soul
leaves you asunder
It rattles your mind
you struggle with the existential truth
as this insane “new normal” renders
dying alone a new meaning.
We are hunkered down with this reality
plaguing us like a night with its black teeth
a nightmarish hamster on the wheel routine
slowly seeping as a black hole in our lives
stranded on our islands:
cooped in the isolated corners of our little home
when the dystopian future
sits boisterously on my cushioned couch
mocking us as we look for the safe haven
in the flickering end of the night light
seeking muse to dying quill in these trying times
solace to my reticent mind
as its struggles to find the meaning
unraveling in the cold corridors of the life
unspooling life secrets,
baring every knackered fear out in the open
a burgeoned display of frenetic lies
trying to find solace in that sepia-tinged paper
as the days grew ashen
poetry holds the light in its cupped palms
a sane meaning to my discordant thoughts
screaming from every nook and corner of my
filled yet lonely room
and I try feverishly
to find shelter in my poetry.
First Published in in HeadLine Poetry
at the empty streets and the hallowed lanes stripped of the
faces and the laughter, the cheers dying in the fading noise
there is more to this silence than the darkness stuck
in the black teeth of the night
the thrumming of the lone harp wire falling on the empty ears
the rolling of the subways bouncing off the empty walls
Silence screams the loudest cleaving the hunger in our souls
the pixelated appearance of the gentle soft faces on the screen
a metaphor for social company.A replacement for warm breaths
on the back of my neck for that phantom apricity
the waves throbbing and breaking on the empty shores returns
half-hearted to the places
not baptized by the fleeting touch of the soft palms
and baby fat legs dipped for mere excitement
giggles lost in the pulverized sands as the barren beach
calls out for mercy, this deafening silence is no longer pristine and pure
social distancing is the pure sustenance we all are craving these days
we now look with our parched eyes to foil the gaps in our sight
which we slowly brought on ourselves living in this orphan moment
as the corrupt architect of this empty world
Megha Sood is an Assistant Poetry Editor for the Uk based Arts and Literary Journal MookyChick.Over 450+ works in journals including Better than Starbucks, Gothamist. Poetry Society of New York, Kissing Dynamite, American Writers Review, FIVE:2: ONE etc. Works featured in 40+ anthologies by the US, UK, Australian, and Canadian Press. Three-time State-level Winner NAMI Dara Axelrod NJ Poetry Contest 2018/2019/2020.National Winner Spring Robinson Lit Prize 2020, Honorable Mention Pangolin Poetry Prize 2019, Adelaide Literary Award 2019, Erbacce Prize 2020, Nominated for the iWomanGlobalAward 2020. She blogs at meghasworldsite.
Jersey City, New Jersey
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.
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA),
Stanford University
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