Pandemic Poetry: A year to remember

It’s often been said that the truth is stranger than fiction. But the last 12 months exposed us all to a reality even stranger than metaphysical limericks. It’s hard to believe, but one year ago this week, we were just settling into the idea of sheltering in place for an entire month in order to bend the curve. Yes, we capitulated. And the curve, it undulated. And you pretty much know the rest.

We’ve all developed our own ways of coping with this viral eruption and societal collapse. Part of my strategy, as you might easily guess, was to write poetry and fairy tales. And once I got past the initial shock, I was actually pretty productive. Mostly I wrote lyrical children’s stories and transcribed classic fiction and folklore into rhyming verse. But I also wrote a few limericks and a handful of haiku about the pandemic itself.

It’s a painful, morbid, and even sadly controversial topic, but certainly not one we can ignore. So without further circumambulation, here’s my spare change on the subject.

Limericks about the pandemic

     On an anxious excursion to Shock Town
     In very bad need of a talk down
             The outcome was brutal
             With plans rendered futile
     The year of the soul crushing lockdown

You hardly need another person complaining about the lockdown. But what’s far more disturbing was how the facemask got turned into a political football.

     With the country wrapped up in a mask debate
     Forty-five is proposing a task so great
             Until the election
             And for your protection
     We’d all better stay home and masturbate

Apparently a lot of people spent their free time in quarantine engaged in soul searching and various other methods of self exploration.

     There’s a melodramatic persona
     Who played tricks on the boys of Verona
             But her message came late
             And such was their fate
     To be star-crossed by fears of corona

Literature proved to be another excellent source of distraction this year. When the world’s not in lockdown, it can be pretty difficult to concentrate on Shakespeare. But last summer I discovered that the ill fate of Romeo and Juliet had everything to do with quarantine and pandemic. Late in the play, Juliet sends a message to Romeo explaining how she intends to stage her own suicide. But her messenger, fearing Verona’s most recent outbreak of the plague, is unwilling to violate the shelter-in-place guidelines. So Romeo never gets the memo. And the rest, as they say, is tragedy.

Haiku about the pandemic

         Never mind the masks
         Look at the fake news bubbles
         That keep us apart

Once we got used to the isolation of social distancing, general lockdown and the closure of the economy, we had to find increasingly insidious ways to keep ourselves from coming together.

         Deaths from Corona
         No other country comes close
         America first

It was nothing less than a reign of terror. But there’s even a limit to how may plagues a Pharaoh can endure.

         Snowflakes and gun nuts
         Holding hands by the campfire
         Singing Kumbaya

Once in a while I had the sneaking suspicion that our suffering would bring us together. And even when I doubted that suspicion, I still forced myself to cling to the possibility, however remote.

         Select your own facts
         Orwellian narratives
         Double plus un-good

In the year 2020, we all entered a Brave New World. Reality was already hanging from the ropes, but the pandemic finally knocked the last breath out of it. And today we have nothing but a hodgepodge of hunches and a scrapbook of conspiracies, all pasted together to look a little something like Frankenstein vs. Gutenberg. And that’s why I’ll probably just stick to reading fairy tales.

Further Reading

If you enjoyed these limericks and haiku about the pandemic, please consider sharing the post or subscribing to the blog. You might also want to check out some of these popular articles:

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