Contents
Unplugged?
Isolation alone at home – but it could be just any Sunday when I don’t have a social event.
The question is, and it has gone through all our minds, I’m sure, is “but for how long?”
No answer to that!
Tomorrow, if I go out, I will see a total of three other people.
One at closer quarters than six feet because his home is so small one can’t get six feet away from anyone else, in any given room.
He needs help with most daily activities.
Today, and yesterday, after food shopping for him and myself, I got glued to the screens.
Plugged In, Immersed
Alternating from news, to entertainment, exercises, and back to the news.
I don’t get breaking news. I do not have television, but I do get live streaming with recent news.
The radio is only a few moments behind, but it goes off intermittently.
As far as I know I’m safe and have everything I need.
This ongoing, spreading infection results in me feeling uncomfortably self-centered.
Yet if I’m O.K., I can help you be O.K..
I can stay isolated to a higher degree, take less trips to the shops, use up less of my gloves and alcohol, so you can buy yours.
Sedona, the surfer girl in pointe shoes, gets shockingly, completely unplugged after her date rape, by what happens next.
For almost a year.
We hope her adventure will be engaging for the YA readers. Perhaps become a hit, followed by a couple more books.
Yet, after what the YA readership is going through now in real life, will Sedona’s adventure pale? Will her story come across as “been there, done that”?
Or, will this challenging, surreal time pass and quickly fade into distant memories as life resumes in a new normal?
A very different normal, I’m sure.
Will the novels we’re writing now quickly become Historical Fiction?
Because life as we know it will never return?
No answers, yet.
There’s more to come in endurance for us all in sickness and health.
What do you think?
What is the most difficult aspect of the situation for you right now?
We’re all in limbo, right?
And there is a huge storm coming, weather wise.
Be well.
The first poem I got accepted for publication (in recent years) is How Much Must She Storm, about the world itself pushing back at human avarice and greed. Here it is:
HOW MUCH MUST SHE STORM
I grind another two scoops of coffee beans
Organic, fair trade. I will change the world.
And I will write all day. I am green, no paper for me
Electronic, per the day, per the century.
But then…there are…those little boys…
In the Congolese mines, kidnapped, scratching for tantalum
Their sisters little girl sex slaves – just useless eaters – each
Strip mined by rogue militias; our gadgets buy their guns.
Disposable, like we throw tissues, our landfills swell
But those mass graves will degrade neatly, no one’s watching
(And where were their mothers when…)? Give me a break – Shot!
Put out of the way of progress, they’ve served their purpose.
Wounded, these mothers rage, screaming to the Earth and sky
Pounding on Her, they grind their faces in Her mud
Smeared with traces of Her precious metals, this is their death mask
Has She heard them? Has She rolled under their hidden graves,
On their behalf tilted an island or two? Rocked a nation awake?
Exhaled poison particles – clocking the plutonium footprint?
Carbon takes the back seat and the twisted guts of clouds
Whirlpool Her garbage disposal of our stuff.
What have we generated – ivy degree’d pillars of our society
Don’t ask our stolen mall-rat girls their ages, in the sexting.
No walking the streets or risking a private club raid;
New world markets are facilitated by electronic auctions.
Instant and encrypted connections made, money transferred
Milk carton children upgraded and risk-managed,
The viewer sites virus protected. Circuits sealed with tantalum.
But – busted! Mother Inc. cracked our code.
Do their mothers know they buy or steal humans?
She’s been listening, watching. She’s willing to tilt,
Quake, tide, ice, meltdown, over-clock, super-size…
How much must She storm?
First published in the Sanskrit Literary Arts Magazine V.43 UNC Charlotte 2012
