THE CORONA DIARIES

THE CORONA DIARIES

                                      A Developing Poem Sequence by David Erdos

©  David Erdos March, April... 2020

Contents:

CORONA, CORONA

THE EXPERIMENTS

TO MY PARENTS, TODAY

MOTHERS DAY (2020)

ROOM ONE O

AS FOR TODAY

THE PSYCHOSIS OF STAYING AT HOME

FROM AN OLD VIDEO

HOW IT IS AND WILL BE

THROUGH THE WALLS

WHEN WE RUN

DEATH AND DINNER

HEAT AND STREET

TWO HAIKUS FOR ONE

DIDDUMS

SHORT FOR SUNDAY     

FOR A KISS

TO A FRIEND IN HER WORRY

SIMON SAYS

THAT LOOK

HARKEN BARKER

GAGGED

HOOKEY

YOUR DAILY ICKES AND PAINS

WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AGAIN?

THE DELIVERY

WHEN PUPPETS RISE

LIVING LOW

CALM, COUGH AND CARE

THE UNCOMMON COLD

THE SONG OF SELF

IT’S RAINING…

ON THE JOURNEY

THE AIR BITES

ON A FELLOW INMATE

AT THE TABLE

THE OTHER TROUBLE

FROM TOM WAITS TO THE ROAD

CORONA, CORONA

As the climate freezes itself into cubes,

It strives to contain heated virus;

As dangerous breath breaks on windows

The splinters soon spear all those close.

From what was Chinese,

Now Canary Wharf issues warnings,

Quarantined in Kent, or approaching

These struck London towers,

The stark fears of such demote hope.

Perhaps the overseeing ‘Godforce’ has inhaled

Then blowjobbed back its protection,

As man ejaculates, frightened, the fluid release

Overspends. With chance of salvation

Withdrawn, or if not withdrawn,

Then diminished, sensation, truncated

Becomes the tremours and shakes fear extends.

What can be enjoyed? Breakfast? Lunch,

Or the supposed comforts of dinner,

Each one a potential last meal at this moment,

In which everyone who eats is condemned.

The title of this poem puns

On an old Bob Dylan number,

Just as it charts and minstrels the sly design

Of a sickness that has made the semblance

Of health, slick pretense. We are the dead.

No surprises there, let’s be honest,

But if we’re dying now from contagion,

Derived from cell, or lab, who defends?

Are there truly governments behind ours,

Actively plotting extinction, so as to enact

The last strumming of The Ballad of Man

As it ends? Will every singer grow hoarse,

And each larynx phantom? Will we rise as ghosts

From the barrel while still rolling on, towards doom?

Or are those unknown plotters in rooms

Hacking at themselves for fresh chapters,

In which our extinction, from cancer or this,

Calls the tune? People we know wish us dead,

Even if their actual names part escape us.

Perhaps there’s new language for the schemers

And finks we can’t see. The collaborators who break

Through the corrupted skin of spent cities,

Siring themselves to oppressors, and cashing us in,

Forcefully. The Corona arose with perfect timing,

With the shock of Trump and of Brexit

And the Australian burn in the bush.

It was as if Moses returned and looked to God

For expression, only to find that God smote

With locusts; now, will new first borns

Meet death’s hush? The masks allay mist,

Invisible, yet intrusive. On trains now and buses

We terrify ourselves through the seats.

But now even the masks have run out,

Dousing  each protest song before singing,

Finally Science Fiction has made our facts

And day feel complete. We are in a horror comic,

Right now, or perhaps a ghost story.

With naturalism now legend, they will sing of us

In dark times, that will look to our own

As the progenitor of avoidance;

For we did not stop to question

And as cancelled Kings, lost our throne.

.

On a ruined path, aeons on,

A mutant Dylan squarks boldly;

His broken tone will rouse Angels

As they fall stunned from clouds:

He’s alone. 

David Erdos   29^th February 2020

THE EXPERIMENTS

Attended by strange angels in white,

We see the glow is not of wing, but of lab coat,

As they stoop to study, the astral asserts

Across paradise. As the aliens prise open our heads

We glimpse the founding myth of religion;

Which is simply a naiive journalism

Beyond which the true story seals and deceives,

Through disguise.

We are their globs under glass,

Or what passes for glass in their cosmos;

A mistake to be charted, disseminated, then cured.

What we see as God is not God, but a Tutor perhaps,

Or Instructor, guiding the knives slipped within us,

Dealt by focusing some star burn’s comet force.

Our ‘Angels’ are projection; no more, patient faces placed

Over their ones, whose flesh moves as water,

Or whose expressions no doubt, stem from sound;

For our surrounding fictions save us from the truth

Of exposure; as we stain space, our sad corner

Is an angle that they can’t allow. And so they intervened.

The Egyptian Hieroglyphs had it: those stylised figures

Were not cartooned, just to scale. They achieved

Bright new forms and designed the tombs for all people;

Misunderstood these grave mountains were erected

To prize each Pharaoh. The alien forces felt shunned

In the delivery of their message. Their death innuendo

Was a sophistication too far for mankind.

And so they left us to rot, and rot occurs aeons.

The Pyramids became arrows, pointing towards

A lost overthrow. After Atlantis, and Greece,

After the Egyptians and Romans, Von Daniken’s

Starred graffiti was there to detail each attempt.

How many times on one slate can you clean away

The excesses? How many times can you tell them,

And just to what wronged extent? If the vanquished

Rise up, that alone, does not make them worthy;

Circumstance, act and context are what define that value.

The survival of man despite the blights first delivered,

In no way excuses the state of his and her decline.

That’s truth’s glue. And God is an alien, let’s be clear,

And does not live on our planet. God is a resident,

Or a landlord in locations beyond where we are.

Infuriated, at last, ‘God’s’ agents were sent to destroy us;

One by one, these assassin hitchhikers, rode on nuclear light,

Comet, star, to stain the walls and stories we have,

From the scratch on the cave, via Bible tale,

Through to Sci-Fi, from Bayeux Tapestry to TV screen,

Each experiment found its title without each subject struck

Knowing why. The abductions began. As did the scribes

In their writing; from madman disbelieved in the village,

To Bradbury, Aldiss, Dick. Authors who each sermonised

For some of the truths we’ve avoided, using spectacular fiction

As cover for all manner reports coming in, a la Strick.

Communions. The Third Kind. Each a fairy tale, almost,

But as with Hamelin’s Piper, or the Witch in the woods,

Darkness robes;

Seen through dying eyes,

As they carved, we were still brain cleansed to see angels,

And yet each abduction once finished is a gospel of sorts

For the probed. But each was merely space peering in,

And the force behind all known being, and behind

Unknown being, which was there to make us feel

More alone. God gave up long ago. The Atlantis wave,

A third flooding. When it rains, God spits on us,

Aiming attack through the drops. And yet the alien angels

Persist, but rarely seal the wounds they’ve been peeling,

It is through these splits, truth’s last feeling

Will haemorrhage, waste and clot.

Wracked, we walk on, with the experiments lost

Within shimmer. A wing folds, then a tendril.

There is a ripple in the real.

The wind stops.      

David Erdos   March 4^th 2020

TO MY PARENTS, TODAY

You’re better out of it, both.

What becomes of him now, your poor offspring?

Having earned more, this season than ever before,

Now it stops. For, just as you struggled for wealth,

After the paying of the bills and outgoings,

And were in turn, ruined by others, now,

As life rations and there is a war around germs,

Joy has dropped. Or has proved itself scarce,

As it has proved since your passing, with death’s

Own biology freezing the system of flesh you once held.

As both of you were born in the war, your child

Has never known the days like it, but on the 18^th March,

2020, the suffering and the prison has been held and defined

By a cell. Such a small thing that grips the molecular bars

That contain us, through which your dual spirits filter,

Tapering smoke, from life’s heat.

We are as good as the dead, even as we undergo

Partial living, and while I, scared, and housebound,

Am still wishing your return, loss repeats.

If it is the loss of the now, then let that now

Not undo us. Let it instead provide witness

To the horror that spreads mouth to mouth,

As if each kiss were a spear, or each tongue

Tamed by fire, or words said, literal weapons

Making the nuclear air lingual doubt.

Today, you would be both elderly, and not quite

As remembered. Vulnerable, separation

Would at this crisis time, mimic death.

So, somewhat perversely it seems, I have to express

That I’m grateful that you have both been sky folded;

Taken in, wrapped, delivered back to that further expanse

Beyond breath. This is a world on the turn.

I am wondering now, when to see you?

As reality pivots, we see in stark dreams the divide

Between the places we knew and the ones towards which

We are headed; death’s darkened party

Suddenly seems far too close to deny.

Should I wait to be asked, or gatecrash my way

From this crisis? Were I to arrive, would you see me,

As you’re both so much further on in the room?

Enveloped by dark, I imagine a light you’re near

As glimpsed spectrum. If I were to edge my way

Between others could I slip my shade from this gloom?

Would I be accepted by you? And would you once more

Provide shelter? The air here feels heavy; unbreathable,

Part ordained. As if it were the last vestiges of the old way

Of living, before fascist filters resuscitate former pains.

The world is not natural. But death of course is pure nature,

Inhaling light now and distance you shimmer and sway

Beyond stars. I am calling out to you both

As I have across the combined years of your passing:

Be safe, becalmed spirits, but if you and others can,

Guide us

As for the living,

None of us know

Where we are.

David Erdos   March 18^th 2020

                       

MOTHERS DAY, 2020

                             

                                           

I know what you’d say, Mum, today:

You’d settle in and keep settling.

Seeing the current mess as the product

Of the inevitable doom we’ve incurred.

You would be firm, resolute,

And possibly content in your garden.

If shut inside you’d be troubled,

Needing the world of work to feel useful,

And letting that ease boredom’s curse.

You resisted your age, until cancer

Provoked death’s defiance. The first point

In your lifetime that anyone or anything

Brought defeat. So, if here, today,

You would have done all that was asked

Of survival. Your sense of preparation was expert,

Despite the fact your past training had been –

Beyond your fault, incomplete.

You would have mastered – or mistressed –

All this and taught selfishness its true lesson,

Shouting at the ignorant Tesco shoppers,

Like a Sainsburys saint, shaming all.

You bowed to no-one of course, and yet

You would possibly refute direct action;

A realist loving sunshine who was nevertheless

Braced for rainfall. Born just before World War Two,

The new one now might remind you

Of those dangerous says in the suburbs

Where reality itself sought collapse.

More than eighty years on, those selfsame streets

Are made tender, as they strive to endure fresh abuses,

The smear on the news and masked facts.

Little for the moment seems good,

As an uncertain shadow starts falling;

A fascistic flag’s heard to flutter behind the impatient

Warnings of birds, who could have showed us perhaps,

Or given some indication, if they’d had any regard left

To spare us before the stark shit drops; solid words.

You would have bought a few things in bulk,

But only to ensure that I had some.

And I know you’d have driven despite the tank tarred

Streets to reach me. In a world on the warp,

You were my spirit level. And yet now, you’re pure spirit,

And all you kept within falls, released.

Today is your day, as it is for all Mothers.

Even at my age I need you, as all need theirs.

Mum, its dark.

We do not know what will be

But as we write in hope, I’m still looking

For your remaining traces of comfort.

Lilian, I still love you.

As I am

Your

David Marc. 

David Erdos  22^nd March 2020

                                                                                                      

ROOM ONE O

Now it seems, we can write

Winston Smith’s tragic book , in sharp corners,.

Not to the forgotten past, but to a future

Who’s survivors of course, can’t be us.

It will be to the cockroach king we address,

And the nuclear worm, as it burrows.

It will be to the contaminated fish, fast evolving,

Forgoing the gleam that man gave it,

As Christ was said to relinquish

His much damned friend that last trust.

We will write towards the black earth

That will soon admit a new fire;

As these rivers of red lava landscape

They will rewrite and withdraw man’s fouled seas.

None of these forces, of course, are much prone

To reading. And yet we’ll keep writing,

Against all advice, just to feel,

The scope and speed of our fall

As those who conspire against us,

Do so with a knowledge that no-one

Thought true quite believes. Only the insects

Will know. Their comment on us will be motion,

As they intricately nurse the wreckage

To rise and revert back to rose

What we were will recede and be finally

Papered over, before man’s last litter

Diminishes into ash and words close.

These final embers will fly, as the insect hordes

Rewrite landscape. The soil will smile again

And start talking in the language of leaves, rain

And light. Will Winston and the sufferers

That he shaped across all of man’s limitations

Leave a mark on such changes, or just a simple scar

On the hill? Certainly the spiders won’t say,

Or any of those crushed beneath us,

The flies, the bees’ transport, said cockroach, the ant,

All were killed. Because we feared what they were.

But as Winston wrote, their bore Witness;

They knew that they were survival, and he, at best,

Man’s last hope. They crushed Winston, too.

As they’d crush us now. We’re the insects.

So, sting those who’d snare you.

Room 101’s all too close.

David Erdos   March 22^nd 2020

AS FOR TODAY

                                                                                    

As the tanks align, so do bees.

As I sit in my garden now, they conspire,

The honeyed hordes more enlightened

Than my race and I seem to be.

Beyond this semi-detached little Drive,

The warring crafts carry tension, 

As these bees scour bushes

For surviving seed, the earth breathes.

Yet we don’t dare to. We close,

With the hunger for masks aping nature,

Like birds in the nest, we need info,

As the recently hatched lust for worms.

The bees at least seem informed,

While we receive ill timed information.

All holding death’s hand through flirtation

While seeking the peace and ease none confirm.

There will be in time in which light,

As graced as it is may oppose us,

Exposing all of our limitations

Under intense scrutiny.

We will have to fall in line for a while

With most of the harsher strictures of nature,

And let these bees try to heal us

As soldiers obstruct clemency.

The bees are reminders of course

Of freedom’s flight and our prison.

The world we have made and the systems

Are the shackles that sink human worth.

Re-evaluate what you are as you lease

The chains that define you. As those bees

Seek renewal the may still revive the lost earth.

We placed these binds and loss on ourselves.

But the great escape remains waiting,

As the bees stitch through sunlight,

May each seam leak restriction

And our captive clothes forsake dirt.

The hives are open. We’re shut in,

Naked as the day we were born:

Bless the dying. In sacrificing, they’re inking

And entirely fresh testament

That some other creature will write,

While the bees continue their working.

I envisage an evolved form in my garden

Or in the place where it stood, seeing sense.

And hearing perhaps in their sound

Our own distant echo. For man, too, is buzzing,

Scouring light for lost honey

And the kisses that time still suspends.

David Erdos   March 22^nd 2020 3pm

  

THE PSYCHOSIS OF STAYING AT HOME

It's all in Ballard, of course: all you need do is read it,

As each wall seems to tighten, the suburbs beyond

Have run wild. Riots threatening themselves within parks,

As trees percolate hot house gases, and the swift return

Of time’s despot, in his current disguise is unveiled.

There will be plays written, poems, songs, art and screeds

For salvation; a vast and new generation of prophets

Each struggling to find fresh acclaim, which will take

The form of theatres in rooms and concert halls

Close to kitchens, as the air bakes behind us,

Colouring larynx and lung, sealing pain.

Perhaps people, in time, will quickly become television.

If we lose sight of what makes us, as we broadcast on,

Love’s reduced. Some won’t even open their doors,

Let alone bathroom windows, unsure of what the winds

Might yet carry; and cold as it is, hope’s confused.

As Social Distancing Strikes Social Media may fall victim

To the same warped illusions that the Media Circus deployed.

We will find fresh stars on the screen and see our laptops

And phones as the portals through which we gaze

On arrangements of the pieces of us time destroyed.  

If you stay in long enough, you breathe in the dust

Sent to age you. A sly cannibalism that fills and filters you,

Mote by mote. As you feed on yourself you devour books,

Films and music that you’ve seen before to grant comfort,

But now we must recognise the importance of a new,

Hidden note. The sounds of discord which stem from isolation’s

Insistence, implementing the soundtracks for the coming films

Of ourselves. ‘I will show you my pain if you show me yours,’

It will happen. A pornography of the spirit, funded by the hands

Fate has dealt. We won’t notice the world adapt and change

All around us. Unaware of the forces that are gathering now

As we slide. Ballard’s great Inner Space is what we need to uncover.

Instead,  we shrink under panic as the life we lived slowly dies.

And something else takes its place; as the fascists above

Find their flavour, a new underground rises, and rises fast,

In small rooms. As each artist grows thin and each activist hungers,

We will rage our war of attrition and pixilate horror’s cries

Around doom, to become apocalyptic perhaps, as the popular

Fiction most favour: the zombie, still living, the vampiric thirst,

Garnering. Our ideas of what’s real will mutate, just as our sense

Of ourselves adopts changes. In my neighbours garden, young

Children emit animal screams, their sounds sting. This is the time

The unschooled of whatever age achieve graduation;

The ignorant stance of defiance is the fear that falls all too close.

I hear it now as I write, trying to make sense of what happens

And whilst reading JG Ballard as Bible, his are the threats to prize

Most. For what he saw, decades past has become a form

Of prophecy for us: that inherent madness as written,

And which we all deny, coats our breath. As we cough,

Our own hand becomes a form of Biblical tablet,

On which is inscribed the commandments that both shield

And secure human death. One might go mad thinking this.

And yet the day must find order. If we concentrate calmly

And possibly read the right books, we will find a true way,

Despite the coming months and their carnage.

Telepathically, there’s connection between like minds

Harmonising and the empathetic lines between looks

As we face time and connect; ‘Whatsapp with you?’

Will form greeting. Using the same tools that control us

To make Whitman’s old ‘song of myself’, multiplied.

We may yet surpass Ballard’s blame and his firm accusations

And learn to live without guidance other than the type

We provide. A communism of sorts, or community

In appearance, who cracked and crazy

Ensure that this fresh insanity equals pride.

It is not mad to say this. You are still alive, JG Ballard,

As are Heathcote and Harold, Leonard, David and Ingmar,

All of the poets who preached their own divine form

Of gospel. In their voices, this violence:

The actions within will reach far.

David Erdos   March 23^rd 2020

FROM  AN OLD VIDEO

And so each nation pauses, like film,

Or an old VHS used to do, for a tea-break;

Each heart and mind frozen, as it waits

For a quite different thrill. As the streets

Are policed for the first time (or so it seems)

In an aeon- in which the crimes that required

Prevention were allowed to roam.

Now health kills.

We  hold our breath, held inside

As the despot purports to breathe for us;

Imploring all not to gather and to rota the parks

One by one. An entire community cut,

Apart from the wave, or song at the window;

While the new TV programme to be called,

‘The Death of the Past’ has begun.

Nothing will quite be the same. And so we wait,

Beside silence. Examining the new port and spaces

That slowly infiltrate each charged line.

We do not know what will be, or for how long

It won’t, for that matter, and so now create actions

That populate exiled time. In which the schools stop

And work, endured at home, loses purchase,

With no shop or outlets, the manufactures of hand

And mind seek new ways. We truly now write

For ourselves, while exchanging hopes across pixels,

Fresh compositions of wanting that help to define

Stolen days. In the pausing, like ants released in an instant,

There will be an outpouring covering each silence

And slab with new life, in which, carefully we will learn

To enact loaded futures,

Borne heavy, it seems, from the function

Of an old analogue stop and rewind.

David Erdos   March 24^th 2020

                        

HOW IT IS AND WILL BE

How will we know when it's gone?

Will they infra-read each day’s colour?

Check each eye for the shadow of biochemical light

Set to blaze? Or will there be a particular slant

To the breeze, and a sudden roar between hedgerows,

Small plants’ brief admissions, and a shimmer

Of applause through heat haze?

No, there will be a signal word from someone

Allowing us to ease ourselves from our houses;

Homes that transmogrified into prisons

And with which we may yet grow estranged,

For a few hours at least, with some of us keen

To loiter, if not with each other, then 

In the repopulated parks and the places

That will have been until that point Sci-Fi strange.

We will be our own virus by then, scrabbling over

Cleansed landscape. The trees will turn and flinch

As we pass them, and the birds above start to arc.

Insects across earth will move in divergent patterns

Around us, as we seek fresh asylum and favour

In the places in which man and womankind

Made their mark.

                

And who will we trust,

When they say? Minister for (compromised) health?

Science Actor? Or is the word that is cyber, a cipher too

For deceit? How can something just end if are we not

Precise with origins? The AIDS monkey, musuemed

Now has a waiting space on the wall: framed defeat.

There will be a decision that’s set to grant some illusion,

For the naiive stance of the eager to restore all they once had.

Resembling a rebooted screen, rude health will fire on,

Near orgasmic, regifting the graphics we once deemed

As the province of the disassociated soul, and the mad.

High on Tescos, we’ll run along the aisles, loving labels

Rubbing rice on our bodies, or pouring pasta sauce

In a bath.  And yet, the illusions we’re left will only go

So far to sustain us, before what’s behind us,

Draws the dark veil back, for a laugh.

A precedent has been set. just as an ill tuned President

Broadcasts. His distorted vision tragically now represents

What we, where we are, what this is and what will be,

If we let it: Caught in moment of reprieve before falling

As the sky becomes supermarket whose shelves reveals

Ransacked stars. Or at least for this moment, right now,

As that perfect sky screen seems misted, and we in shock

Await soothing and the soft reclaim of the past.

How will we know when it ends? I’m not sure we will.

All is covered. The genius germ’s unrepentant

Before the chameleon breeze and adapts.

And so we wait. And we hope. And we try to prise apart

Silence, while knowing that words and poems can,

If we’re honest and aware of ourselves, form a trap.

Perhaps they will know, finally when a threat free zone

Stands established. In a hundred years. Or a thousand,

The evolution in seasons will render them fit to sing.

And they will in turn serenade all of those who rise to revive

What’s relinquished. A communal contagion between

The ordinary air which dreams bring.

In the meantime we will write, and work away

In our houses, each slight of hand making magic

That will in time provide source for a reformation

Of sorts and an immunity to this danger.

Until we know, conjure futures

Behind your window screens

And sealed doors.

David Erdos   March 25^th 2020

THROUGH THE WALLS

Toothache, today. A much loved friend talks of toothache.

Forced to connive with his dentist, a trial by the gums, sentences.

How will all modern ills manage thus? Or indeed, get a haircut?

These are the normal things to consider, or is it trite, in a poem

To just mention this? There is certainly more importance

At play, but Ben’s stoic pain comments clearly: as each vulnerable

Measure and position of need claws at time, will we house

The prospective caveman’s return, or align ourselves with the hobo,

As toothless and hirsute, the sad stumble into accusatory light

With stung minds?

As I eat the next meal I consider

The correct means to replace it. The continuing panic of people

And power’s aging game charges on.

There is a sense that we are being controlled and the pains

We both feel and inhabit are for today, the small cages

That not even calcium can keep strong.

Certainly the small things accrue.

In my little house I have a water flow problem.

Unable to free housebound plumbers, I could soon

Be drowning through an absence of flush in my waste.

So, with each bath,a held breath, and with each bite,

Suppressed hunger as I attempt unsanitised pride

And forced diet; all desperate acts before taste.

Ben takes the chair and opens his mouth for intrusion.

As his pain is capped, new nerves bristle, preparing perhaps

For the germ that is always happy to wait, thanks to God

Or our government’s dreaded sanction,

For the blight to blow freely across the strained landscape

As the forsaken Angels above us start to bed down

With the worms. My friend’s toothache cries out

To the distress we’re all feeling; it is a song from the spaces

That connect us all, afterall.

As Ben bargains for ease And puts himself at risk

to seek healing, my own house Hears his echo;

May we all hold hands

Wall by wall.

David Erdos   March 26^th 2020

WHEN WE RUN

Reading Alan Garner’s Where Shall We Run To?

The dream of the country child now entrances;

Innocent airs, freedom apples, and the remnants

Of unexploded bombs by the brook;

The strain of Cheshire air that restores

And is free of the current sense and scents

Of extinction, that and the solid poetry

Of his writing, streamed and distilled

Through his book.

Each of our childhoods,

In time, assumes the form of a poem;

Abused or idyllic, the crusts of age,

Crystallise;

A mimetic chrysalis, caught

As the butterfly burns deep within it,

And Garner’s ancient words smoulder

Before taking modern flight.

The mind cries.

As does the heart, for such small scale

Ecstasy is existence.

I time travel back through these pages,

Forgetting the day I see:

Hope denies.

David Erdos   March 26^th 2020

  

WITH DEATH, FOR DINNER

With each new day baked in heat,

The sudden coldness at night feels instructive,

As if a recipe has been started to tenderise and to strip

Pale human meat from the bone, as it boils itself

In confusion; its hold on both form and structure

Releasing a flavour more suited and savoured

And more akin to death’s lip.

    

Death is the ultimate gourmet, of course;

Carnivore, Janeist, Vegan; organic and eager

To prize both the vegetable and the flesh.

So, as the ensuing gas is turned up, and each soul

Set to simmer. Death climates its way across

Courses, for the first time content in not knowing

Which particular dish is served next.

David Erdos   March 26^th 2020

HEAT AND STREET

As the heat lasers through,

Thought directs to the homeless,

Trapped on the streets, rife contagion

Turns each cardboard strip to hot zone;

Individual ghettoes, manned roads,

And ‘lost womaned’ doorways.

With the parks closed, who grants shelter,

As even the luckily housed feel disowned?

Those with homes now have less.

Confined inside with small children,

If you have a roof but no garden,

You are a captive indeed, of stopped air,

And a little more like the souls

Who reclaim the confining winds around

Freedom, as they prowl Spring’s enclosure,

Free of sanctuary, calm and care.

Yet suddenly, money appears, seemingly

Imagined up out of nowhere.

Necessary, it proves helpful for the temporary

Hospital and employed. While the self employed

Hold their breath, picturing perhaps their own

Exile, along with the prominent danger

Of having all that you once worked for

Consigned and delayed, near destroyed.

Who will protect us, and how?

And for how long is the question.

As we worry away, each a Hamlet;

To be or to not makes art hate.

Fuelled by a bank balance’s collapse

And a heart which seems to break beyond

Loving, we each finger moments

From which we once carved hope’s template.

The heat expands. We’re exposed.

And society has its X-Ray.

But who now will heal us

And who indeed, compensate?

We cough, looking up,

Tears in our eyes.

Each cloud’s silent.

Homes and streets close

And open.

God clears

                  its throat.

Humans wait.

David Erdos   March 27^th 2020

TWO HAIKUS FOR ONE

A Police chopper

Above

Sprays public pesticide

Over suburbs:

Covid 19

Caught by moonlight

As dreamt by

David 50,

Undone.

David Erdos   March 27^th 2020

DIDDUMS

It would appear that he has it: Hooray?

Ungracious, I know, even churlish,

But his faux Churchillian airs and graces

Have been graceless at best, let’s be clear.

Yet now it seems germs provide

A quick connect to the people;

As he breathes in time with the stricken,

What will Boris lose that’s held dear?

His poorly expressed oratory

Merely smears the pale statesman,

Who will cough, sneeze and splutter

In the hope of enhanced sympathy.

With his close to designed martyrdom

(He won’t know if he’s Cummings or going)

The plans for empires are established

And we are asked to bask Boris

With the same concern as those loved.

Potential tyrannies, humanised, as the Tory

Stronghold seems to strengthen,

A socialist act, pre-taxation,

Like Mussolini’s trains warms the glove –

That grips the soft throat as it struggles

Through phlegm for persuasion,

So that the voice clogged and mottled

Can still espouse confidence.

We will have to see what’s sincere

As the face is cloaked by soiled tissue,

And begins a new language

With which no captive tongue finds offence.

We talk of courage and hope, but no deadline

Comes for the living, even as danger ‘poems’

Or journals away in the dark.

We still do not know what we should,

Or how to quantify our resources,

As the ruling forces spit at us,

Invisible handshakes leave their mark.

No-one should suffer, of course.

And at the end of the day, he is human,

But will this new alignment make Boris

(And Dominic) truly see

Both the fear in the face

And the context behind the contagion,

Or will the callow guardedness of this poem

Make them wish it back, straight at me?

These are the times to be French (certainment),

Certainly, and to once again sibling Europe,

Even while keeping it at a distance,

As you can’t contain liberty. So let fraternity

Reign, and egality sister brothers,

As we hope the germ binds us

And sets no lip to tremble.

I do not want to say Diddums,

As spent and squandered we still seek

Love’s currency. Prime Minister, will you

Spend that on us, as opposed to the former

Campaign of ascension? And are we all

Cummings, or going across the common field?

Who’s healthy?

David Erdos   March 28^th 2020

  

 SHORT FOR SUNDAY

A Margaret Rutherford film on TV, with its sense

Of former England reconjured. ‘Murder, She Said,’

An old Christie, in which the delights of deceit

Frame the day. On this supposed one of rest,

Which sisters now the week’s others, there are traces

Of fresh genocide waiting for us, as if death’s authoress

Held full sway. Suddenly Agatha Christie transforms

Into a sly Beelzebub of the spirit, with Miss Marple herself

As Archangel, shepherding us all down the Styx.

It makes one almost long for both things, as an easeful

End would seem kindly, as that innocence we once savoured,

Masked as it was, still turned tricks. All illusions sustain

And are naturally there to grant comfort. Watching such films

At the weekend when I was a child, restored time

To its proper position place. But today, it seems,

We are timeless: counting not days now, but hours

To make each era resound and renew.

I may spend much of my own time with these films,

As I HG Wells back through the decades. Seeking

Margaret Rutherford, Basil Rathbone, Alec Guinness,

Mason and Grant, Niven, too. Peter Sellers when fat,

Or Peter Ustinov always, those great Sunday staples

I long to see again with my Dad. And yet my sweet Dad

Is dead, as indeed are these others, and so their ghosts

Now speak to me, singing in praise, rarely sad.

The rain kisses glass, as if to comfort the window.

I look through and remember, just as my stare

And screen now reflect. I savour the film in detail

And draw the rooms I see into my room.

On this end of March Sunday.

The Maltese Falcon’s on next.     

David Erdos March 29^th 2020

  

FOR A KISS

Avoiding crowds, exercise and supermarkets, I am close

To floating now in the spectrum between active health

And ill-health. Each day so far becomes prayer, not to a God,

Or high spirit, but to the slow reserve of the body,

Which if it were to be defined by a poem, is certainly unrhymed

And misspelt. I can hear the agoraphobia start,

Like a series of clogged wheels or vices, holding my tread

And desire to venture forth and taste air, which can no longer

Be trusted, THEY say - whoever they are who contain us –

Removing us, as they do so, from once treasured landscape

And reducing us quickly to sofas like seas, and cliff chairs –

From which we careen and topple, in time with the freedoms

Prized over decades. Those unions of abandon seem

The Science Fiction now in all this, as we peer through smeared

Glass and guard our front doors with real caution,

And the world beyond mists, masks and mirrors

With the intensity of a kiss. I want to kiss someone now,

Passionately,  I admit it: for those who have someone,

Do so, and for as long as you can, free from air,

For it is in that embrace you will find sanctuary

And infection, if not from the virus,

Then from the particular disease that spreads care.

Here, then, is my gesture to you, a nation and world

Of kept kissers, as I in my mind touch past lovers,

With the pen of my tongue and lipped page,

I say to you, let mouths bind and loneliness become fashion,

Which used to change every season;

So or those out of fashion and for those bound in,

Recognise - that for the foreseeable now, sun, or not,

We are within the same winter. So, let your kisses melt

And free reason. Let your kisses calm.

Charm your cage.

David Erdos   March 30^th 2020

TO A FRIEND, IN HER WORRY

(For Nazare)

Dearest friend, in this flood, remnants remain

In the water

Of the flesh and care we may cling to

As we negotiate line and light.

There will be the rush of harsh winds aligning themselves

To the current, with love’s driftwood snagging

Each direction and dream, to still blight.

Retain as much steady ease as you can,

You have Robert’s love as your shadow.

You have the touch of friends within language,

And the children of course screening in:

Let that screen, telephone and each message,

Remembered restore time, tide and season

To a featureless day that won’t win.

Darkness falls, certainly, but it falls on light:

Buried treasure.

Just as eyelids close, while preserving

The potential to see each day’s prize.

So as we all try to fold in order to protect ourselves

From the virus,

the germ of hope also bolsters,

And like Covid 19, multiplies.

Two currents, one stream

Along which those we love, are all swimming.

So may we all wave across water,

Even as it courses its way through dry land.

Breathing in a life force

that we will have to charge

Ourselves through thoughts shining,

Complete with all of the powers

Of friendship,

As this new sea storms, we’ll hold hands.

Do not despair. We’ll repair.

Even if that means as new creatures.

The former amphibians once more crawling,

Leasing the waters of perpetual change

To emerge,

from all of these flash floods

Of shock, and oceans and dreams re-imagined,

Re-fashioning fears,

To defeat them

And rendering the life we left behind as absurd.

Let us wait for a new sense to arrive,

And to prepare its way among others.

Let us now in so doing, channel that dark

With a bridge

That is built among friends,

Using all of hope’s clear construction,

                                   

And forgetting all of things sent

To spite us;

 Selfishness,

 Politics.

We will find a fresh way,

Or pattern a way, through resistance.

We will distinguish between the hope that’s speared

And the dream, from which me will hatch

Both immunity

And survival. Deliver your tears to the river.

Dear friend, we stand with you.

Each fall and rise,

Loved and seen.

David Erdos   March 31^st 2020

  

SIMON SAYS, or A LIFE AT THE MOVIES

‘I don’t want to be told what to do..!’

Simon says on a phonecall. And there it is

In a nutshell as they line up at Tescos

And Waitrose:

Freedom’s flower,

Part crushed,

By a man with both mask

And basket, forbidding my friend the abandon

Amidst the shining aisles he once roamed.

Walking later that day I experience

The same sad zones at the Co-op,

Servers behind screens and mouth-nets,

Allowing the infected Zombie hordes

Scant supplies,

Pre-packaged flesh, as before.

Eggs rare as gold dust,

Prohibition prepped lager,

And Grail like toilet roll, as hope’s prize.

One doesn’t want to go out if this is the landscape

We’re facing. Like Planet of the Apes

With fresh monkeys,

Or a stumble away from The Road.

Or, The Omega Man, with Simon perhaps

As Chuck Heston, and those strange hooded

Figures now forming. With all other shops

Closing they will have to stitch and bind

Their own robes.

This is how we’re controlled:

Fear, first, then solution.

Whether final, or flimsy

We will have to negotiate a new way.

Doubtless we’ll evolve,

Slimming down, leasing bodies

Those of us, unlike Simon

Who remains as lean as the bacon

That I wanted to shop for today.

Oliver Twist springs to mind.

But is Boris Johnson our Fagin?

Is Priti Patel someone’s Nancy

And Dominic Cummings Bill Sykes?

Will we lay before Soylent Green

While wondering how many portions

Comprise us, as A Brave New World falters

And 1984 moves to strike.

Children of Men coalesce

As Logan’s Runners start crawling,

The life we knew is now fiction

And the people we were close to ghost.

There will be a new life, with new rules

That we must compose for survival,

While those in the know plot inaction

The sentence we serve powers most.

We must tell ourselves what to do

In accordance with both hope and refusal

Of the ties that bind. We’ll film freedoms

With the magic of minds: Daily spells.

With each house now a cell that comes

With sanctioned exercise and a walk,

Life is prison.

And yet we seemingly

Have the keys still. So, which way to turn?

Stumble well.

David Erdos   March 31^st 2020

THAT LOOK

Another friend, Philip reports of more

Supermarket suspicion: THAT LOOK,

Traded freely, while gaining more purchase

Now, than the tins. It is the fresh currency

That the poor at heart have been spending,

Signally strange new sensations

As the end of community claims a win.

I saw THAT LOOK spent, as I strolled,

My legs strangely heavy, as if fighting

The welcoming pull of the prison

That has always been my heart’s home.

My lost Mother’s house. I am only glad

She can’t see this. I’d rather her dead

Than divided, with us cut by a screen,

Both alone.

And now we all are, while rationing our cares

And our money. With those who venture out,

Each ignoring the ships of passing day

And stilled shore. We can’t even wave

From the mast, lest we get too close,

Or breathe freely and so we cost and charge

Every moment. As the stopped sea cools,

Silence roars.

It is the Pinteresque pause that powers on,

Ripe with meaning. In his crises of silence,

And his sharply splintered rooms we are found.

I will go out today and catch the same look

As Philip. Someone will cross the street as I dare

Them not to not be safe, but to honour

What still remains common ground.

And which is riven with common sense, too.

For there is still a way to survive while performing

Due caution.  Call it a first rehearsal for being,

Or even the former decencies of the day,

Which while being lost, still have a part

To play in us. As we breathe alone, retain distance,

But be at least warm within it.

Consideration grows abstract,

And yet I urge you

To implore them all:

Don’t be stupid.

We can’t afford that.

Not on this April Fools Day.       

David Erdos   April 1^st 2020

HARKEN BARKER

In the last years of his life, Ronnie Barker

Recorded induction tapes for new inmates.

The Prison Service employed dear old Fletcher

To reassure those first timers whose criminal stance

Brought offence, that there would be endurable days

And nights to come, braced for comfort,

Or if not comfort, then purpose, in which

Ronnie Barker’s voice secured friends.

Those first nights in stir, may have perhaps

Swilled the porridge of panic and fear and persuasion

Spread like vomit, or bile through the gut – revealing

That the worst might happen, so, Fletch, sounding

A good deal older now, less commanding, did his best

To convince them that life resumes while doors shut.

Clearly we need Ronnie now. A mug of toilet roll

Would appease us,

Or filling the glass from this distance, with or without

His flat feet; words from the wise, or the correct

Comedian’s counsel; laughs laced through living

That makes life’s tapestry feel complete. So, harken Barker,

And Les, Spike, Monty Python, Eric and Ern, Tommy Cooper

And all of the forgotten ones, too, who regardless

Of the real forged a flare for the adult, to lead them free

From danger and steal some of the chill from gloom’s blue.

Come back Pete n’ Dud! Conversely, your soft side

Is needed. We can savour the edge again once

We’ve strengthened, but for now at least, we’re confused.

Or perhaps it's just me, but I’d welcome such returns,

I admit it. I can hear the old music as I try to work out

What to do. Fashion be damned. Everything now

Becomes equal. A return to lost rhythms

As we begin marching now in our cell space

To some half remembered Themetune. 

David Erdos   April 2^nd 2020

GAGGED

And so the comedian Eddie Large loses scale

As he receives death’s reduction. An indication,

Of sorts, of times folded,  including the kinds

Of life we once lived. Where healing wards secured

Health, before they became a breeding ground

For infection: so, don’t get ill, die, or injured

At this trial like time. God forgives

But spares no-one it seems, especially those

Who spread laughter, along with orderlies.

Nurses, Doctors; the stars for whom Angels

Respectively lined up to applaud. Eddie loomed

Large but now the person he was is rescinded.

Joining his predecessors, sky sanctioned, for whom

Dark entertainment now regretfully shuts its door.  

On Question Time last night, Health Secretary

Matt Hancock appeared jubilant, almost giddy.

His surname paled the connection with a past

And once prized pessimist. What was the source

Of his joy; some blanched Bulldog spirit?

Or possibly secret knowledge of something

That none still on the ground knows exists?

What is the joke being told, and precisely who

Owns the laughter? Because it isn’t Sid now,

Or Eddie’s, or Benny, or Bob, Larry, Bruce;

Those, free from taste were what this country

Once favoured. But now this is JG Ballard’s

High Rise as Bible. We’ll soon be eating the dog,

Gagged on truth.

David Erdos   April 3^rd 2020

                                                           

HOOKEY

Just like a child truanting, while all children do,

The Primed Minister makes us mother.

Expecting our pixilated arms to embrace him

In his hour of need feels obscene.

With his loosened shirt (for appeal), and unkempt,

Boy-like trademark, his video close up seems to push

His fat and fevered face through the screen.

There is the genteel reminder to stay:

Like you might say to a dog before whipping;

Big Brotherly false affections in which the sibling

Of choice will be struck, as most young children are

By their older brothers who beat them. And by

Their sisters, too, poised and Priti; with them in the house,

We’re all fucked. For Google know where we are

And are flinging it all towards Cummings,

Who uploads frenzied data into his preordained spells,

Which are nothing to do with magic, of course,

As they favour misinformation’s illusions.  As we sit,

Trapped, phones betray us, irrespective of who’s sick or well.

Everything is now up for grabs with everyone playing

Hookey. For instance, Examination grades will be based now

On a teacher’s attitude and approach. For the first time

That sense of disrespect that’s been spreading

May perhaps bite the children who thought that youth

Alone held control. Now no-one owns their lives,

At a point when the precise opportunity rises:

Even as the stalled future grows as abstract as Miro,

Duchamps, or Magritte. Picasso like mirrors will warp

As we pass and stare, sweating at them, while seeking

Strange new dimensions to rescue us all from defeat.

As with Orwell’s child spies, separation does nothing.

We are all watched and witnessed even as we feel

Incomplete.  Apart from those with loose shirts

Who are holding the ties sent to bind us.

And the person in Wu Han who matched prawns

With panic and made us all tender meat.

David Erdos   April 4^th 2020    

YOUR DAILY ICKES AND PAINS

Having endured for so long the jaded sneers

Of the public,

                            For his global followers, David,

Now has the prophecies that explain

Both the sudden dome built above

And around our perceptions, as the One Percent

Slice decisions, just as they do air, for our pain.

Icke’s initial conversion to Christ has in ecstatic

Reverse rendered him John the Baptist;

From a roughened chrysalis, bravely entered

He constantly re-emerges, charged as he is

By Sharp thought,

That peels back the skin

Of both the truth and the lizard,

As a recent London podcast now batters

Huxley’s and Number Ten’s  converse doors.

According to Icke, and thanks to the processes

At play, we are living the plot of Steven Soderbegh’s

Film Contagion; using the Wu Han prawn

As replacement for the pig Paltrow touched,

Instead of seeing the meat that basks

In high places, as a shadow  baked cult

Of commanders,  with ever hovering forks

Feast  on us.

With the data’d dead as hor’s d’oeuvres,

It is the healthy hordes who’ll be dinner,

Caught on our plate s in our houses,

And roasted, no doubt by 5G.

With microwaved air set to stun, the Baptist stirs

The dark waters, and the economy vapours

Before rippling away to lost seas.

Today we are all swimming sat,

While looking out for an island, but not in a sea,

Bowl, or armchair, or even that Chinese chef’s

Cooking pot.  We are caught in something that steams

And fries away former flavours, or which has been both

Designed and delivered by a fact and fiction so savage

That this Sunday sermon

Would poison all Vicars

To become the type of dare

God forgot.

David Erdos   April 5^th 2020

  

WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AGAIN?

No screen will ever replace sitting with you,

Touching  your face and  fine features

As if a loved one’s skin was pure Braille;

For a kiss is no click. The language of lips

Can’t be cursive;

Rebooting your heart

On low power leads to a troubling time

Where love pales.

I worry now, when we meet: Will the intensity

Be affected? And with so much taken from us,

How will we master the breach? Or will we fall,

Thankfully into long sought for embraces,

Or destroy each other with the frustration

And violence that this burgeoning regime

Aims to teach?

I miss it all: as with friends, passing the pints,

Proud before us,

Or expanding a point,

Conversation is amputated somehow on TV,

As we become our own BBC, broadcasting

To the Na(rra)tion, that we have set ourselves,

With tight borders.  What will we spend, or squander

With hope as the fresh currency?

But is it the hope to see you, my friend,

The one I still love, and my colleagues,

Or does that fall under the realm of past fiction

That one used to read to a child,

Such as

Blyton’s Far Away Tree, or Ursula Le Guin’s

Textured landscapes? In which fleshed locations

Will the new desires and dreams be defiled?

Exercise on the spot

Just takes you further in

To the body. The exercising

Of friendship is the adrenalin rush

We all need,

And so with these words,

I am reaching out,

                                 Running,

                                                     Loving

Into the expectant arms of friends,

And lost lovers,

Lost mothers, too.

Hear my speed.

David Erdos   April 5^th 2020

  

THE DELIVERY

Last week, I manned my post and position

Most days, sat in my compact front garden.

Waiting for my Logan’s Run Postman,

With the streets to himself, to pass by;

He talked of an active change in the air,

As if it had been coloured by ‘something,’

Perhaps 5G radiation which to some thinking

Has become Covid 19’s slick disguise.

Those two things certainly came thick and fast,

If not hand in hand, then adjacent.

A friend who was sick in November

Is sure she was in full Corona mode then.

Thus, two separate natures collude,

With each one malignant; aborted by

Mother nature, surely these two surly sons

Seek her end.

As I stand today and look out,

The air does indeed yield strange flavour.

As with milkskin on custard, there is

A viscous trace through scent’s shape.

Is that tang the sudden lack of Pollution,

Or worse, the Van Allen belt singeing,

As corrupted streams vapour through us,

And the islands we brace separate?

One cannot avoid it, or spend

These days of confinement just cleaning,

Preparing ourselves on the homefront

While the battle lines rise and turn.

For are these the days of cleansing or cull?

The days of facing down, or exposure?

Are these successive days to be embers

As the flames of the past start to burn?

It will be a different future, for sure,

Than the one we expected,

In which Saint and Sinner have both faith

And Bibles to either rewrite or to earn.

New testaments, then, to either the fall

Of man, or a rising, that roars

From the frontstep to each street as stage

Lessons learned.

David Erdos   April 6^th 2020

WHEN PUPPETS RISE

As Boris fights on the Ward, are his darker

Angels and cohorts charting the means to make

Martyrs? And what are his proper sources

Of comfort, with Cummings’ left hand up his shirt?

Would it were Trump, no doubt denying death

As it took him, ‘fake newsing’ all he can’t fathom

As a cold and encroaching sea drowns the hurt.

For there is a new form of fascism at play,

Gathering now, like infection. We have heard

The right wing as it flutters and seen the shadows

It casts across land. Suffering spirals now,

Beyond sense, as Corona arcs its ascension,

Spreading now as an eagle, or, perhaps

An oil slick’s spend across sand.

We have called it the rise of The Right.

An unfortunate word, if we’re honest.

The direct opposite; Left, does not capture

The power and need to resist, mentioning only

Remains, to which those who oppose are not suited.

So, make it through, Boris. Do so. But know,

That if Judas were here, you’d be kissed.

So many unknown others align.

If you know who they are you should tell us.

See the light. Speak directly.

The people now sick beside you should give

You a new sense of place.  Their immunity fails

In the face of fear and foreclosure. If Statesmanship

A la Churchill is truly what you seek, turn your face.

What you loved before cannot last.

We are at the end of one chapter. If you were

Once a writer, than look instead to the people

And do what a writer should, man: describe.

Not only what everyone feels, but also

What they would wish to take from each season. 

Just as in dreams, we discover  how the inner

Informs the outside.

Everything in the air infiltrates, 

From pollution to gossip, and while I fear

The future, I do not do so now, terrified.

For I see what the issue is: we’re the worm

And THEY are the birds flying over.

When one close to them suffers,

Then it is us, in the ordure who must turn

And then endure and defy. It's all in the work

Of John Gray: The Soul of the Marionette:

                                   

Strings breed puppets. But the puppet itself

Has potential, particularly if you read or pay attention

To Kleist:  Self awareness ensnares.

Inner consciousness forms transcendence.

So, concentrate; you’ll earth values

That the fascistic cannot see or seize

Through their heist. Which is going on as I write.

As the truth obscures, we fall, heavy.

And yet those birds fit for breaking

And those puppets, paled, on either side,

Can still rise. The skies seem broken but sun

Is still scorching through imposed darkness.

As our days and nights begin merging

And the bastards sleep,

Scour light.

David Erdos   April 7^th 2020

LIVING LOW

I live in a bungalowed street: two sides

Of small terraced houses. As I sit out,

My opposite neighbour ‘front gardens’,

Wearing her pruning gloves and primed

Mask. I may as well live on the moon,

Or in Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running,

And yet without those two robots,

My solitary stare turns stars dark.

We are now in settlements,

It would seem from some ill conceived

Science Fiction. Meanwhile my friend,

Sarah, a Policewoman is trapped in an unkempt

Minibus, issuing warnings and returns

To Londoners who disobey prescribed

Strictures, as characters strive to do

In a story, while submitting to structures

And allowing the author’s pen to grace trust.

It is only in Plays they speak out, often

Surprising the writer, as characters in a drama

Should move within context, word by sudden

Word, thought by thought.

Just as I do,

Today,  sat with nowhere else now to go to

Than the local shop, as an extra

In Planet of The Aches, or, perhaps,

Soylent Yellow – before it turns green; 

Let’s write more.

We need to imagine, at last,

A fresh and new form of fiction,

From which true Utopias are distinguished

And the Dystopian dirge can’t be heard,

For we are all living low in a shoddy film,

Or TV show. Our books need new binding.

So, rouse the page I beseech you:

And let the Theatre Of Being never fall prey

To what they used to deem as absurd.

For those supposedly absurdist writers

Were not. They simply re-imagined conditions.

Ionesco. Arrabal. Pinter! They were anything but!

They were realists. And beyond the shallow,

Predicted the message behind wasted words.

Now we do not know what this is,

Or who is actually writing.

We are as low as ink.

We are drying.

But some waters rise.

Write,

Return.

David Erdos   April 8^th 2020

CALM, COUGH AND CARE

People call and ask, ‘How’d you feel?’

But is it actually the health of the head

They refer to; the corrosive spirit that acids

And alkalines too, the blurred brain?

The health of the face sisters this

Even as it sources contagion,

And yet the mind as it splinters,

Cut from full use, takes the pain.

I was starting to worry, somewhat

What with this daily reliance on poems,

On these word grenades that contain me,

These small flower casks that I throw

Across the uneven air,

Hoping that some will breathe with me,

While each cough brings me closer

To a corrupted day, darkness glows. 

Perhaps it is a signal, of sorts,

As we try to define the occasion

Behind what invites us to participate

soon

In the end

Of what we once thought of as our right

But which has now truly left us.

Those who cough alone can’t last longest.

Those who cough alone can’t kiss friends.

I have had a headcold for days

But now I cough as I type this.

Is there a line in my larynx that will write me

Into the daily public tome of the ill?

My temperature is becalmed

But still, imagination trumps fiction.

As with that word’s unfortunate reference,

Has former reason sought to betray

All good will? There are those who don’t care,

But to those who do. My head loves you.

For those who don’t, we’ll spit at you,

When this is contained.

Feel that outbreak of rage,

Fear that spill.

David Erdos   April  9^th 2020

THE UNCOMMON COLD

The common cold used to wield the full arsenal

Of the sinus; the throat and nose’s collusion,

With the gathering sneeze, as attack.

Infiltrated by flu, each soldier fell before battle,

Declaring war within peacetime, as each

Sense of self bore the flack.

Now that selfsame cold masks deceit,

As it clearly contains the feared symptoms:

The cough, and the soreness in both the throat

And the eye. I check each breath as its pressed,

Examining valves for the virus, and attempting

To forge health’s illusion for the peace and belief

Of the mind.

And yet still, conspiracy swells:

A troubled plot for the glottis. Has the air

Been reflavoured, with all of its former scent

Now disowned?

Rather like those fearsome

Ovens of old, the days are all haunted chambers,

With each of us as the herded, jackbooted back

To our homes.

With all common sense ghettoised,

Each new delusion turns fascist.  But there will be

A decadence somewhere, a swilling of germs,

A fat kiss; someone unknown to us, in the know

Who is drawing around separation, coughing at will,

Sneezing, farting as they lustily subvert this.

While the rest of us, meek and mild,

But still wild in spirit, remain inside, watchful,

Ready for the expected return of past bliss.

But what if that bliss doesn’t come?

What then are the ways to feel better?

Of the Quarantine, many have said

They enjoy it, but we should be wary still

As we work, for there is always a hood,

A rug to pull, a loose floorboard,

Always a fall we are close to and always

An unexpected stain on the shirt. Or the blouse,

Nightie, smock, shroud: such stains spell us.

The common cold’s an old story. But it is being

Rewritten. This uncommon one sounds through hurt.

David Erdos April 10^th 2020

THE SONG OF SELF

It's dangerous to enjoy sitting it out, while everything

We assume is going on just continues: kept calm

And/or crazed in our houses, partially visible lines

Reshape place.  Everything will no doubt look the same,

Should the day actually come that we see it,

But perhaps a fresh filter on a once familiar strain

Can be traced.

Now, some creatives relax

And get on with their writings and paintings;

Music moves the moment and scores new thoughts

On dance as we’re stilled, while some fall, ill-graced,

Removed from their own motivations, but perhaps

In that, there’s true value, as creating, or not,

There’s still will. Perhaps it is not enough

Just to write at this particular moment: as afterall,

What comes after is the question each of us now

Must ask. It isn’t simply the day that contains

Our new mission but what the day does by dying

And rising again. That’s the task.

I am writing myself with my own sense of vigour,

But in doing so I am wary, as who will want to read

Or hear David’s Covid and the test of Covid 19

Once its passed? Having lived through it, all will want

To define the new twenties, and my own attempts

At recording will be like an old VHS, paused at last.

Something for only dust to seduce, now that the shelf

Itself has been archived, with Video also murdered

Alongside its victim, the former ‘Radio Star.’

Nobody recalls Betamax as all of us Alphamaxines

Enter crisis. Technology tamed us but as it connects

And hope sparks, we will just have to measure events

And not get to insular as we do so. Events bloom

Like poems, breaking through pavement and page,

Whisper, screen. And yet relevance has no rhyme

When everything calls to chaos. Remember that:

Private passions do not always contain common dreams.

It is by being careful, we’ll win while setting down

Our impressions. But it is upto us to shape features

And futures too, as THEY sheme.

Who are THEY?

Who knows?

All I want to say is, keep asking.

It is not of the self I am singing

But of the air we own.

That’s my theme.

David Erdos   April 11^th 2020

IT’S RAINING…

Nobody has talked about dogs, or cats,

For that matter, as it rains down contagion,

What about those prone to some of the old

Climate fights? Are we to shut down Man’s best

Friend and find an active vaccine for pussy,

Or do some of our pride and pleasures

Remain behind fresh foresight?

Are we to place our cats in a bag,

Before we let them rub on us? And will we

Walk our dogs on extensions that make

As much as a mile appear free? And what

Of squirrels, or birds? Are we only safe

With the goldish, for whom bowl and water

Provides its own quarantine?

What are the decisions to make about

Our animal proxy? As we send them out

To each corners in order to survey

The changed world, they become Avatars

For the air, and for the street scene recoloured;

Four legged or winged reminders

Of the ever racing boy and chased girl.

Slowly, the world now revers to the natural

Animal kingdom. Their sweet rule becomes

Sacred as our flags and nations slide down

To be folded and with a tear in the eye,

Tightly furled.

The cat opposite

Remains calm and basks in the sunshine.

What dreams does it cast?

The birds answer, and so they commune,

Wordlessly. There is sense and music at play,

But it isn’t he kind hands can master.

It is in the unseen rain and ellipsis,

As win, lose or weather,

A new truth is told,

Silent, free.

David Erdos   April 12^th 2020

ON THE JOURNEY

I once wrote a line in a play in which a character’s

Suicide note said, ‘Bored of shaving.’ 

Today, shaved, I’m bracing for an attempt

To renegotitate what we are.

To find fresh purpose, perhaps,

As everyone now  becomes artists,

Writing away diaries, journals,

Astronomical charts for held stars.

                         

As one of those who can’t work

Until occasion demands it,

I am shaping the day into corners

Within which any number of actions can hide.

And yet I also observe, or perhaps detect

The faint glimmers of possible futures,

With bare walls as mirrors reflecting

Some of the ways one might die.

                         

For this little house is a tomb,

In which my body rests, blessed by treasures;

The books and music and pleasures

Of both repentant flesh and fouled mind,

The culture and calm and special language

Of music; the ages of film, books’ great eras,

Each surrounds me and comforts,  revealing

Surprising grace, lifting blinds

That while lining my kitchen reveal a quite

Different location: one in which the man ages

As I can see him now, and remains,

Just as he is, as he writes and reads and looks

At you. With each home its own transformation

In a life of days that death stains.

One will have to ensure, if alone, that one

At least  feels protected. I talk to different

Friends as they call me, or I call them

To check in. It is as if deserted by tide,

We have each of us made our own island

And are waving, hard through the houseplants

Signalling with clicks for a rescue

That somewhere we hope, now begins. 

Stranded, anchored, somehow each little landmass

Starts sailing;  the computer screen becomes

Porthole  as the small ship David’s books

And stuff journeys on, going nowhere at first,

But still trying to reach its emergent Cape of

Good Fortune, one it still fights and aims for

Despite the indifference of some, the tide’s strong.

The name Erdos means wood in the Hungarian

Language its housed in. And wood floats once splintered

As I float now in my home. With memories of my Mum

And of my Dad constant with me, and the charm

Of friends, I’ll keep shaving, even if one does feel

Alone.  As now most people are, even if just

With their worries. But do remember, in sailing

You have a dream of air and of coast.

My house is no pyramid. It is a bungalow, dammit!

As I look out for your family ocean liner,

Or your own small raft, here’s my toast.

That I raise as supplies as we feed each other

Each morning, by bread alone man is living

And woman too. Stay afloat.

David Erdos   April 13^th 2020  

THE AIR BITES

Why is it this cold? The air’s sharp

While the sun itself seems to bosom.

London bites but seduces with his languorous

Gardens and parks. Now each bares a chastity belt,

Or bind of faith to another, with pubic grass

Lost to the public, and so, barred from stroking

The soft flesh of the ground moves to dark.

And yet still the light glares, daring us,

And while some still breach, they court danger,

Just like the ‘red vests’ in Star Trek, or the extras

In Soylent Green, Logan’s Run..  While the old, ill

And trapped must try to go out, eking themselves

Ever further, avoiding all to find landscapes

As far afield as the empty Motorway carries;

Pursuers of pleasure and the scarring nostalgia

Of sun. But not here, today. Where are you?

A cold front has been sent across London.

A front that feels like an insult as we riot and rage

In our homes. Or, perhaps start to feel the old itch

For some of those lost sensations,  in which 

If one hungered for contact then both need

And impulse were instantly assuaged and atoned.

But now there is a forcefield of sorts, like Sue Storm

In Marvels’ Fantastic Four movies, keeping us back,

Almost kicking as the lip of the light apes a kiss.

The less then fantastic in us, countless millions strong,

Strain and whimper, bracing the cold for light’s

Soothing  and risking, while weak, the chest’s twist

From cold to Covid, to what? That other far field

Or dimension? The one that is beyond Roundabout,

Junction, Motorway, sideroad, all. Only the Flyover

Seems apt, as bullish angels breath on us, all sorts

Of cloud, congealed, phlegm like,

Or like some  ocean in air, spore enthralled.

All we can do is stay in, while gulping said air

Like fish through the surface of a window. 

In separate bowls we’re surviving, but with each

In our glass, there’s a spill. That we all must contain

If we are to survive this cleansed climate.

Which bites me today where I’m living,

As if rehearsing perhaps for a kill.

The ‘wool’ has been lifted it seems

And now that once polluted air can see clearly.

With less cars on the road, the blind’s shredded

And the air itself bolsters fast. The cousined air

Calls across its familial fronts to surprise us,

And seeking calm we taste chaos, as sat alone

This strange visit, unwelcome as it is, seems to last.

I stand and stare at the light, wanting its touch,

Wanting your touch.  And yet as I do so,

The land and line both revert. I feel as if I am

Sinking, slightly and will need another period

Of adjustment; a photosynthesis of the spirit

In which I will either become like those sunken

Sea creatures or take on a new kind of root

Through the earth.

The cold sun grows me

Anew and yet I am spiralling now

To far planets,

Where carved by climate

The sky will understand my full worth. 

David Erdos   April 14^th 2020

ON A FELLOW INMATE

The noises of others, through this has become

Its own form of symptom. You can’t, of course

Choose your chaos, or your neighbours too,

That’s quite clear.  If on a certain (former) income

You’re placed in the dense contagion of cities,

As expressed through selfishness and pollution,

And felt in the heart, air and ear.

We all tune in to inane chatter, loud noise,

And the lack of consideration for others;

As some feed on silence as a means to survive,

Just as in their way, so many others crave talk.

But the sheen of community is not shown

Through a series of badly made false impressions;

We still require a balance if we, like the pilgrim

Are to lift up our beds, rise and walk.

It's certainly an impossible conversation to have.

Those in country climes may escape it.

But for the legions of us caged by cities, insularity

Does not soothe, seal, or heal. Instead, it forgoes

That brother or sisterhood between neighbours,

As separate cells make roads prisons

Through the bars of which no-one feels.

What then are the issues at hand?

When the hand is rendered numb by this climate?

Everyone does their own thing and nobody close

Stops to think. We consider ourselves all the same

As we chorus in with Arthur G. and Paul Simon,

But the bridges that breach troubled waters

Without craft and sweet care duly sink.

I sit and hear this loud young man’s soundwaves

Rise, while calling out for new music. Sadly, a lack

Of taste is the torture that pushes social harmony

To the brink. But distance does that of course,

Especially when used as a language. That we either

Learn or mouth badly, as difference divides us

And confrontation receives its nod, or twitch,

Its skewed wink. My little road could be a corridor, almost.

I can look into the cells through each window,

And see the separate lives Covid’s planned.

Each sentence seems long as we sit and wait

For the judgement, and of course each has methods

To alleviate Kafka’s crime – chiefly life itself

(Let’s be Franz),

                             

Something to be only understood

When it's done.  So, can you understand neighbour,

That to be in on our own is communion

Especially under graced weather. As calm questions

Climate everyone needs their own peace.

If not of mind then certainly of the moment. 

You’re new. You’ve just moved here.

If we’re going to be friends we’ll need fealty;

A fidelity through the hi-fi, and for the air

That’s shared, 

Hear my plea.   

David Erdos   April 15^th 2020

AT THE TABLE                                                          

There is a new sense of wariness now.

I can almost feel it slide between sunlight,

Easing itself into garments and assuming

The shape of all men. And all women, too,

As this doesn’t discriminate across race

Or gender, but is far more concerned

With slipped spirit, squandered heart

And soul, slick pretence.  It isn’t our fault;

Its design, a form of dark engineering:

Government dictate, or Diktat, delivered

Satellite sharp from on high,

Which is clearly making us low, and suspicious,

It seems, of each other. As neighbours go out,

Or jog past me I think I observe agendas

At play, hear soft lies.

              

From biting and somewhat

Wild winds at night, to the melting of Dali’s

Clocks in the daylight, time’s stamp and purpose

Has become in losing scale, quite surreal.

As if there were melting points in us all,

As we start to seep across tables- at which I write:

Mine’s a life-raft and a trusted place no fate steals.

But now it teeters somewhat, as this sea of heat

Swells to claim me. It shifts my shore and reduces

The permanence of home, hearth and place.

I am at war with my face, as I attempt to shield

Myself through the shadow, as an insufferable sun

Tries to douse me, forcing me ever inwards,

And down to a final point without trace.

It feels like we are being shaken as dice.

There is a tempest here while I’m sitting.

My sinus releases and then blocks again,

Breath by breath. This is an unbelievable time

In which every newsflash is Bible, and the way

Of words alters the range of testaments we have left.

Nothing suits. Nothing saves. What we thought

Was real loses purchase. The once prized

Objects now are as abstract as Miro, or Salvador,

Baked by fame. Only food is the goal, as if fuel

Equalled fire. But meanwhile that heat roars

And rages and the person I was fans the flame.

The fear of being ill, makes you ill. The fear

Of losing hold sets you spinning. And so,today,

At my table I melt and play my part in the game.

A friend of mine yesterday saw a group of Police

In a cafe. There were no masks, no precautions,

And a low rumble of plans as they laughed.

They ate their eggs, chips and beans and spat

And chewed over orders. Sunnyside up we’re all

Frying, but for who or what forms the task?

And so that wary feeling hacks up,

Like the inveterate sneezes that claim me.

Around Johnson’s table, and Trump’s bland bib,

What’s the deal? I can’t breathe properly and all

I have is a headcold. Can I feel the gas slinking

Slowly? With the grand oven outside, its blaze seals.

Something’s not right. I just can’t put my fucked

Finger on it. And so I grasp the table.

Using the pen as a needle and these words

As balm.

Watch it heal.

David Erdos   April 16^th 2020

THE OTHER TROUBLE

Of course, the trouble is now,

That there will be so many confessionals

Through Corona , that there will need to be

Founded fresh churches on still unruly earth

To contend

With the sheer weight

(and wait) within words that have sought

To countenance the depression

Under which we have laboured, seeking

Both relief from the pressure, as well as

Securement from some private guiding force

As our friend.

                              
How will we bare it all

And move on? As many may want to forget it.

Especially those whose confessions as opposed

To confessionals have been housed. The darker

Partners that play when doors are locked

Through closed country. And where the former music

Of windows in showcasing light and view

Calls for cloud.

All at once, everywhere,

Ants and animals achieve congress;

We move full with function but we do not know

Why anymore. There are so many victims to count

Amongst both the dead and the living,

While those primed and placed on the front line

Try to keep us all kept indoors.

Policemen and women rake through the dead,

Gardening as they do so, as do the NHS workers,

When plucking the troubled weeds on the wards.

The unfairly rationed care within Carehomes

Has produced both selection and compost,

As from dirt gaining, the occasional flower

Bursts forth. 

A new bill has been passed,

Granting the state its full power.

We can be checked, and forsaken, sampled,

Ransacked and displaced. The ‘Orwell’ digs deep

But at the foot of it, there’s no water,

Just a dry mouth declaiming the fading glow

Of each face.  ‘In this breach each business goes,

Just like Michelangelo,’ A great poet’s paraphrase

And misquote which shows at once how

We’re failing, and falling too, the land taken,

Or ‘tableclothed’ under us. With the rug pulled

Beneath the elderly will soon slip and stumble,

As will the younger if the sources that funded

And the business that bloomed risks the bust.

Weak without work, we will not keep up

With the state of play that entreats us.

But is this where it wants us, as Covid 19

Bakes its feast? In 20, it came. Or supposedly

Came. It's been with us. But its only now

That its risen. And risen with what: fascist yeast?

Is there such a thing? Sprinkled fast across

The sediment that embeds us. With sentiment

Surpassed and quoted each day the same way,

Something warps. Something wails. Just like

The worst kind of siren: a cover noise

To command us that subliminally underpins

What we say. So, to my fellow confessors,

Just this:

It feels quite bleak.

The heat masks it.

And despite and the lack of Midwinter

This Midspring – if that’s what it is - bounces back.

This is Orwell’s World, Ballard’s world, though sadly now,

Without either. JG’s Crystal World crystallises, as 1984

Redefines what we lack. Even High Rise folds fast,

In order to contain Bungalows closed within it,

As towers aspire and then are quickly tamed

By attack.

Today, these are fears.

But what will they be tomorrow?

Because you see, the other trouble is worry.

The shape of things to come won’t be slack.

David Erdos   April 17^th 2020

FROM TOM WAITS TO THE ROAD

Fears of fascism rise in my Holocaust heart, I’ll be honest.

As I falter before coming futures, it's like the Tom Waits song

About sheds: ‘What’s He Building In There?’ But it's what they’re

Constructing now that’s the question, as all external shapes

Alter and I consider what it must be like to be dead.

By which I mean divorced from the love of life we all treasure.

People have adapted now to this normal and the acceptance

Of that duly chills. It seems an inconceivable thing

That the Sci-Fi plots once derided, are starting to form

A fresh context that contains societal hate as love spills.

If an economy falls every piece of loose change soon

Scatters. Scrambling for the surplus, sharp hungers reach

Will scratch far. Today, the sun’s dark but I look for light

And fresh prospects, while a woman I care for is reduced

To living out of her car. This could well be The Road

Along which we may travel. But unlike Cormac McCarthy,

Or other dystopian dreams it feels near. There is always

A distance to tales, which is a method perhaps to grant

Warnings, and yet across this light, this horizon,

I glimpse shadows in mist that won’t clear. 

It is still hard to define which side of worry

To stand on. The days turn their heads and continue,

While we bow our own and back down. The days

No longer love us, it seems, losing the shape and shade

We shared with them. Suddenly, other lovers

Have courted and stroked their sundown.

I think of the soft down on the face of a woman

I loved in the old life. I think of her widening smile

And the dusk light that conjured a form of transparency

Through her skin, and then consider today, unsure

Of which was fact and which fiction. As I hold

Each book, they lose pages, as if even writing itself

Could not win. There were stories we wrote and songs

Used as soundtrack. Two months ago, all was normal,

A friends night out, work and choice.

But now the symphony has been fused

With Tom Waits’ broken rumble. The shed is closed.

The road open. And the fear in my throat rich

And moist. My words are weeping perhaps for loves

Who are lost and in peril. One friend weak from chemo

Has been left vulnerable, yet adroit. While another

Can work and another receives celebratory gifts

From her agent. It all feels like tuning, before a Fanfare

That claims us. Each dark sound drums and cellos

And a grand great howl provides voice.                                                      

What are they building? We’ll see, even if that is

From a distance.  Just let it not be transported.

The road  is ours, still:

When the time is right

We’ll Convoy.

  

David Erdos   April 18^th 2020

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world. His books include EASY VERSES FOR DIFFICULT TIMES, THE SCAR ON THE CLOUD, OIL ON SILVER, NEWS FROM MARS, CHANGING PLACES WITH LIGHT (penniless press) and BYZANTIUM with the photographer Max Reeves. He is a contributing editor for The International Times and maker of documentaries all over the world. David’s work has been acclaimed by many leading figures including Harold Pinter, Heathcote Williams, Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair in whose recent book THE LAST LONDON, David features. He can be reached at David.erdos@sky.com.

©    David Erdos has asserted his moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.