Half Mast

image from pinterest

Half Mast

“There’s a boat on the reef with a broken back,

and I can see it very well.”--Elton John

The streets are so empty,

it feels like we are living

in a science fiction movie.

The wind carries litter

throughout the concrete canyons.

Great, gas is finally 

under two bucks a gallon,

and now

there is no place to go,

nowhere

in the entire world.

It’s like we are reliving

a Nazi horror story.

We stand by the thousands

next to mile-long,

freshly dug pits,

naked, with our eyes closed,

knowing that millions will die.

Our economy keeps tanking,

as bad as the Great Depression,

but at least in the 30’s

the only pandemic

was hunger and poverty.

Who will govern

after this ghostly corona

has fully blossomed,

when the chamber doors

are chained,

and the tall white columns

begin to gather ivy?

It is not logical

to be told

that the way to win this war

is to do nothing,

duck and cover,

scrub your hands

until your knuckles bleed.

In a few days,

or a month,

it’s projected that all our hospitals

will be overrun,

the mobile military medical tents

and converted empty buildings

will all overflow,

and the sick and dying

will lie first in the hallways,

and then in the streets;

plague rats on a gut wagon.

Everywhere,

the flags are flapping

at half mast,

and I can see them

very well.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at d'Verse Poets Pub