Connecting Through Corona

FATTER     Of course, I could always become truly fat, in order To protect myself from what happens: a slow burden Of skin would secure me to the negative earth Like fused coil. For to be fat is to douse the urgency   Of lost limits and to shine through stretched shelter As the fires within fold and toil. In a sea stung by salt I could feel myself fall to the bottom, sinking not As a stone might, but more as a solo avalanche.   Perhaps, only then I’d be free of the structure And strain that defines me, along with the need To chase beauty. Assisted by water, I would slide Through the silt as hope slants. And yet, fat is   Beautiful, too, as can be seen in large women. But in men, what’s vivacious is harder to discern Through the girth, as their bodies balloon And breath is returned to the blower. Only Orson   Welles remained handsome, while his baby Elephant bloom slowed his worth. So, I could in fact, Hide mys...

  SOUL AS SONNET   After getting the year wrong before, mistaking the month's An improvement. As the days of discombobulation continue The increasing destabilisation take hold. Even even ground Earthquakes in as we lose the outside space and our purpose   And I stand holding onto the window, betrayed still by sunlight Which either hardens or melts into cold. Life has surely become Ice cream now, through which we taste the life we remember, Gifted perhaps by a mother, or father, or a partner in time   No clock saves. So my mistake proves a point: chiefly that I am Doing what I can to move backwards, turning these words into water, Wept like soiled streams from this cave - to the unreachable caverns   We chart across a charred dreamscape. And where a month of sad Anniversaries loses itself within language, that is actively breaking Each moment. As I and you stumble, we hope for return. Is that brave?     David Erdos February 2021 ...

  WHO WON THE WAR?     Who won the war? No-one knows. As in the main, States recover. And yet, now, there's a new war, Easily replacing the old: of the self. I set about it   Each day, as I settle down beside Netflix, Immersing myself within product while mine Falters, broken, and literally left as it is, on the shelf.   And clearly bound by them, too; galleried as I am; A stacked story. With pages unturned, few are reading As we all consider and chase our own tale. But made   Near agoraphobic by this, today I went on my own Talking Head's Road To Nowhere, venturing towards The closed shops of Uxbridge, and in search   Of a part of the past that can't fail. Or, part of another Story, now told, as the weather withdraws the cold given. And yet there are no avenues now to warm me,   And no waiting arms to arrange. Instead, I have been Sending messages out from the front as I become Both my own foe and victim. But today, I dared the air's   Presu...

  THAT MOVE     This street fed sidestep still chills and does so now, More than ever. Venturing out, I bear witness to the denials  Of those at my side. At my approach, they avoid, As a decisive act, free from reflex, as every avenue opens   And each path and corner crossing grow wider and unable To breach the divide, an earlier poem THAT LOOK captured The Coronic expression, but now it’s the body, the entire self Which has changed. And this from those without masks,   While testing the morning air, themed by sunlight, Except that now there’s no music or familiar melody Within range. And yet the sad song is still sung as the corrupted Choruses gather. Wordless within silence, distance’s beat   Makes the move that includes a slack swerve from life, Primed by a kneejerk reaction, that is as reactionary And as guarded as any tragic history can still prove. We were not meant to be so. But now, even the soul feels   Persuaded. If indeed the soul gover...

Cláir Ní Aonghusa   We waited in our hallway, me clutching documentation and passports, our cases on the floor, our hand luggage on a chair. David’s phone pinged the arrival of a text message. “He’s on his way. Five minutes. I see the route he’s taking.” A few subdued, necessary exchanges with the monosyllabic taxi driver broke the silence as we loaded our cases into the boot. As the car glided away from the kerb our road seemed to breathe in and out in unison with slumbering forms behind locked doors. Dublin’s city centre had a jaded, forlorn air as the taxi nosed its way past shuttered shop sand traffic-free, empty streets. At the only operational entrance in Terminal 1, we rubbed our hand with (gel). A masked security man inspected our passports and boarding passes. The airport building was spookily quiet, traffic cones and endless swathes of tickertape fencing off vast people-free areas, ticket desks unattended, wall arrows and signs directing us towards a single bag ...