Zoom, I am seeing my friends but can’t hug them
Zoom, I am playing bingo with my grandchildren but can’t touch them
Zoom I am at my retirement party but it doesn’t feel real.
Keep safe, keep small, keep insular.
A reliance on compliance informed by the science.
Grateful for my life and my wife
And our mothers died.
Jenny Lobb (age 66) Westgate
Outside In
Window to outside
Sunset beauty clouds the pain
Await changing times
Kerry Mitchell, (age 50’ish) Brighton
TC
I’m at the service station,
I need a wee.
The toilets are closed,
“It’s the Covid you see.”
It’s the bushes for me.
I’ve called the optician.
They can’t see me-
Literally or metaphorically,
“It’s the Covid you see.”
We go to the pub
Grapple with their App,
I remember the days
When beer was on tap.
“Stand behind the line”
She shouts at me.
All I want is a cup of tea,
In the cafe run by
The RSPB.
“It’s the Covid you see”
Go to the club
A chance to unwind,
A game of bingo
A couple of pints.
Perspex, signs, rules, dictats,
Don’t walk around,
Stay in your place,
Make sure you have a mask
To cover your face.
It reminds me of the 1980s.
A dole office in Portsmouth.
Fear and hatred.
Plastic Chairs
Screwed to the floor.
Face behind Perspex-
“No you can’t have some more.”
“I’m sorry all our lines are engaged.
We value your custom
But there may be a wait,
I know
our customer service
has never been great.
But now I’m afraid, you can’t complain
You see it’s The Covid
Which is to blame”
I just want things to be
Normal again.
Caf Costello (50’ish) Scarborough
What do you miss?
What do you miss, she asked I miss spontaneity I said –
The way once we met to share Our lives over steaming coffee Or food cooked with passion Now we meet on a screen
In a blur of pixels
Once we could hug a sad stranger who’d lost her keys and
slipped in the mud
While her dog looked on disturbed and mystified
At humans who don’t sniff each other But share space without thinking
Once we’d dance close
with someone we’d only just met
In a dark room vibrating with baselines Or a tent so full of sweating bodies you had to slide in like a fish
And move with the throbbing crowd Of delicious gleaming skin –
That’s what I miss.
I miss the hugging –
my friend, my sister, my lover.
Let’s do this we’d say
Let’s walk, let’s drink, eat, laugh.
let’s dance and press ourselves close And breath each other’s breath Without thinking, without fear
Of catching something mortal
That could end it all in a moment. That’s what I miss,
That is what I miss
Val (age 72) Herne Bay
Connection
…less than a fleck of a speck
a single strand of RNA
particle in a protein business suit
not even a whole cell longing for life
sends us
(the prime ape)
alone
to our rooms
to consider what we most love
can emoticons ever replace
warm tree breezes
the greeting beat of
a human heart
soft sleeping faces
salted sea-tang spray
the scent of fresh cut greens
the brush of kisses
Gaia’s glints her knife at our throats
reminds us what the choice is
Jane Campbell (age 56) Lives off-grid
Jane Campbell currently promotes the Poetry Matters collective. Please contact via https://janecampbellpoetry.wixsite.com/mysite
Break down or break it all up!
Give in or never give up!
Wake up dreading
Wake up at all
Share your story
Keep to yourself
There’s no more glory
There’s no more wealth
Share community
Share yourself
Hate the system
Hate the wealth
Mask down
Mask up
Face down
Face always up
Nkuli, London
Shopping for essentials
Essential: completely necessary: extremely important…
Like Art, the Joy of creating, the Passion for life, and the excitement of exploring ideas and worlds inside your head and out there, where birds sing and polar bears roam shrinking glaciers. Like smelling the wind off the snow, and feeling the spray off the waterfall and understanding their songs.
These are not available in Lidl.
Like a meaning to your life, that makes you want to get up in the morning for the joy the day might bring. Like enthusiasm for getting it done, whatever it is. Like understanding how that it fits into your purpose. Like challenges and meeting them head-on… with a fellow human to share the hilarity of your failures and the recognition of your success. Challenges more interesting and varied than surviving day after almost identical day of social media, Netflix and bananabread, and smiling grimly at the observation that we are lucky to be safe. Like a vision of the future, to hope for and work towards, that we are not afraid to seek.
These are not available by click-and-collect.
Like You, my friend, whom I cannot see or touch, and cannot visit, except by the slippery and deceitful glass screen of videochat. Except in my memories, and my hopes for the future. But you are essential to me.
And you are not available via Amazon.
Even though you are one.
Fin McMorran (age 64 and 3 quarters) Eighton Banks, Tynesid
I scream at the sea.
The sea hears me, but no reply.
She goes on, being, being the sea.
Swelling and heaving,
Crashing and sighing,
Yielding.
To rhythm.
In peace.
I stare into the waves,
The waves gaze back, but still, no reply.
She goes on, being the sea.
Swelling and heaving,
Crashing and sighing,
Yielding.
To rhythm.
In peace.
I yearn for the sea,
The sea draws me, draws me in.
I am swelling and heaving, crashing and sighing, yielding.
To the rhythm.
To the peace.
Within me.
Jayne Hazelden (age 50) Brighton
Four seasons in Lockdown
Spring
Washed our hands and stayed inside
Appreciated spring blossom
Learnt the songs of garden birds
ditched bras and wore trackie bottoms
Our screens became gods and we drank martinis at Corona o’clock
Summer
In May and June we took the knee to show that Black Lives Matter
We recognised our privilege and
lives that police had shattered
July and August brought the sun
And pub gardens welcomed us outside
Eating out didn’t help us out as we soon again had to hide
Autumn
Lockdown pounds started taking their toil
I ran and nurtured the body
I watched the leaves change colours
and took photos of the sky
pink, orange and purple sunsets
Starling murmurations passing by
Winter
Darkness came and shit got real
No parties or big gatherings
We mostly saw our mates on screen
And missed our seasonal happenings
More people getting sick and dying
We all stay home and drink
await the weekly van from ASDA and the call to vaccinate
Kerry Mitchell (age 50’ish) Brighton
Haiku for Lockdown
Was twelve months last Jan
Chemo in a pandemic
Survived it I did
Jacqui Soo (age 59) and a proud Scouser
FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found 