Spring, 2020

legs wrapped around my kitchen chair
         heart pounding
                    hands trembling

images parade across the screen
a bad trip
         without the acid

body bags
         stacked in hospital halls
                    thrown into refrigerated trucks
                              ditch witch digging mass graves

I rip my eyes from the screen
         need to see this horror
                    for it to be real

mask pulled on
         to blend with the essential
                    walk like a zombie? or
                              scuttle like a scared bug?

scuttle

wish i had worn sneakers
         footsteps bounce eerily back to me
                    few cars to mask the sound

at the hospital
         parking lot empty
                    no refers here
                              no lines of meat wagons

the guards won’t let me in
         through the glass front, an empty foyer
                    staff playing games in admittance
                              backlit by a lonely corridor

Where are the bodies?

down the street at the funeral parlor
                          a man polishes the bumper of a hearse
                  in an empty parking lot
                                 no mourners this morning

Where are the bodies?

at the morgue uptown
         no line of coroner’s vans
                    just one van
                              unloading one expired soul

Why the masks?
Why the lockdowns?
Why the warp speed jab?

“Where are the bodies?” I shout.

the answer leaks from a darkened doorway
         where sits an old man in a chair

“When the shots roll out the bodies will fall,”
         he says

hearing this I hastened home
         fearing the jab
                    more than the disease.