30 Poems in 30 Days
This is the first day of NaPoWriMo 2021 and my Lockdown Breakout Tour. I am writing new poems and performing them every day for the whole of April. I have been performing live on Facebook so far and will be posting them here when I work out how it all links up smoothly.
Lockdown Breakout
We were severed.
We were rootbound,
Now everything is opening,
Let’s go down into town.
Let’s get together, reconnect.
It’s time to gather round.
American friends sheltered in place,
And I far preferred the sound
Of that to lock down.
We wanted to flourish,
But we were potbound.
Not sanitized enough
To go out.
We were homebound,
So we stayed in,
Lined up online.
Looking for connection.
Some nurtured compliance.
Some sought insurrection.
Zoomed into divides,
Forced to take sides and have an opinion.
Well I was drowning in the narrative with so much being said,
and the need to be creative with the fire in my head,
before I burned the whole place down,
but I wouldn’t let myself drown.
We were told we are all in the same boat,
but while some was setting sail,
others couldn’t float.
Yachts where tethered to thriver’s guilt
beside various rafts the survivors built.
We were shocked.
Tied to the dock.
Keyworkers worked to the bone.
Others worked safe at home.
There was nowhere else to go,
some had to make the most of furlough.
Paid to relieve us of civil liberty,
like a leave of absence from military duty,
and many more were left poor
and made to make do.
And nobody mentioned the ocean and how it seems so much wider now.
Or how we will all reconnect and decide who’s story was the wiser.
Has anybody checked that everyone’s provided for?
And who’s gonna bring the heart sanitizer?
As we slip off our boats back into the ocean of connection.
What are we connecting to?
Lisa Goodwin 1st April 2021