Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: writing poetry during hard times

 

                                                                                            Petter Pettersson
 

Hard times make some people write poetry, while some cannot.

For myself, the hard times have always become an even stronger fuel for my writing. I´ve always been grateful for this, and seen it as a blessing; it helps something good come out of it.

In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic began taking bites out of us, I began writing poems for my next collection.

Sometimes my hand just seemed to write them by itself, pushed by an internal tension that forced me to get them down on the page.

How does one write about something as monumental as a global pandemic?

One pandemic later

 

Will I love again

one pandemic later?

Will I live again

one pandemic later?

Will I long again

get loved again

one pandemic later?

Or will I leave

never to be seen again

my name forgotten

never to be said with love again

one pandemic later?

                          – Daniel Skyle

Few of us in our time have lived through something similar; maybe the rare living survivor from the time of the Spanish Flu could describe how much worse things were for them when there was no cure, not much understanding what was happening.

And we are seeing the first real pandemic in a time of social media. For good and for bad, humanity is now woven closer together online, supporting each other through love, yet more at risk of incorrect information on the pandemic and the vaccines finally coming.

How does one write about something that touches every soul on the planet, either with the grey brushstrokes of worry and sadness, or with the thick charcoal lines of grief and death?

My hand keeps moving, keeps forcing me to put these thoughts and dreams of the pandemic down on the page.

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

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Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: writing about grief

 

 

And so we come to grief.

During this year, even if we haven´t been directly touched by death ourselves and had our heart ripped out by loss, we have still been human beings alive in a herd that suddenly sees many of its members die and vanish.

Knowledge, love, and grandparents; the libraries of the herd vanishing, one by one.

Even if not touched directly, I think many are more affected by this background choir of grief than they realise. Single voices rising in lament, joining into a chorus, then going quiet, one after another.

And for some of us, that grief has been personal, immediate. A new abyss to face, to try to build bridges across when we can´t even remember what a bridge looks like anymore.

The Empty Chair

The empty chair

across from me

is where my friend

used to sit

she was a

nurse, you know?

Then the virus

came

gave her 15-hour days

the face mask

butterfly-tattoo

she shoulda got

a medal

she would never

get to wear

The empty chair

across from me

is full of love

my grandma

used to say “I keep

my love in all of you”

the virus stole

her final breath

and left her love

in all of us

and in that empty chair

across from me

The empty chair

across from me

is where you sit

as always laughing at

me with me

the politicians

helped the virus

steal you

kissed by both

the ventilator and my lips

now in every

empty chair

I see you sit,

smiling back at

                   – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19 #covidheroes

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: writing on my book of hugs

 

                                                                                           kate_sept2004/Getty Images

Never in recent memory have we noticed the loss of small things we take so for granted, on such a grand scale.

Suddenly, physical contact is first sliding away, like we each are set on ice floes that slowly glide apart, lapped by waves, pulling us apart.

Then it keeps yawning until it almost seems like chasms open up between us and others. We see them, but so far away… Could we even reach them, if we tried to grasp?

No contact (unless you are lucky to have it in your relationship); no touch, no touch, don´t touch. Almost as if plague doctors from the Black Death were walking around among us, whispering through their snouted masks: ”Stay away, stay away. Hic incip pestis. Here, here begins the plague.”

I wrote this poem when I was thinking about all the people I want to hug, once we can hug again.

We will be able to hug again.

And I am writing them down, those who I will hug, and how and where and when. When we will be able to hug, again.

My book of hugs

I don´t sleep anymore

I am up

all night

making a book

with all the hugs

I will give

after the pandemic.

Slowly I leave my bed

and gently put gold leaf in place

illuminating the happy faces of friends

acquaintances;

even Yara, the mail woman

Lucy, the barista

Ahmed, the falafel guy

tenderly I fill in

the glowing colours, paint

my passion on the page,

making longing shine like glorias on icons

I sit there, all through the night,

carefully making a book

of all you who I will hug

after the pandemic.

                        – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: love, and love, and love

 

                                                                                                by Afremov Studio

Slowly, over the year, I have tried to collect voices from the pandemic.

The voices of all parts of it: from nurses to the elderly, from the survivors to those who died. Voices from those tormented by lockdown, and from those who feel the pandemic slowly changing the very essence of how they used to see their life.

Perhaps some of this change might be for the good, perhaps it can help us discard old patterns that kept us locked. But in the middle of it, it can feel like a sculptor is taking a chisel to you, slowly chipping away, inwards, while you are unable to stop the bites taken out of your life. 2020 feels like it is a year that has given us defensive wounds.

And some of us are finally realising how much more love there is in the world than we thought.

This poem below is about an old couple separated in quarantine – but still holding hands.

Sing for me

Corona

an old couple

in quarantine

each in a different place

holding trembling hands

over the telephone

whispering

about how they danced

those nights when they were young

You were so beautiful

in your red

dress

You were so handsome

in your

brand new suit

Don´t hang up on me

my love, sing

like you used to sing for me

                           – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram 

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: pandemic words for tourists visiting a strange country

 

The pandemic has made us all language students.

Each of us, slowly building a Covid Phrasebook, like travellers to a new land.

New words and new phrases are becoming part of the warp and weft of our daily life, taught to us whether we really want to learn them or not. Verbal threads weaving into our smallest chores, into our thoughts and dreams.

It is a new vocabulary to make ourselves understood in this foreign place of vanishing colour and of grey days. Some are words of intensely working science, once complicated that we now have learned to understand; some are in the special alphabet of grief.

Some are the words of tired acceptance, those where we fill our pockets with a new stone every day, feeling how we get heavier and heavier.

And sometimes we even find gold thread – a word that hints at joy, a word when slowly pronounced whispers about a future, a time when where we are all whole again, when the pandemic is a word forgotten like after a school exam from long ago.

Corona glossary

Covid-19

quarantine 

tiers this, tears that

fall and rend and rift and distance

socially

food banks

furloughs

redundancies 

virtual memorials

face masks

hiding the mask

some already wore before.

Refusing to die

I take a walk at night

lifting my head

into the rain

letting tears

patter

on my mask

                       – Daniel Skyle

 

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19