Killing Covid, and My Life After

Stepping up to the door and coming back for more

Killing Covid, and My After Life

Dedicated to my tireless medical practitioners and my loving soul mate who read me the riot act during my very deep sleep… my bucket list was too long to forgo.

Three years ago I had a date with destiny
A blind date with Covid,
She hit me hard and fast;
Wearing her chain-mail dress
Laying me low for a month long fest, 
With so many uninvited guests. 

The good doctors put me into a dreamland, 
Their protective custody, 
Their vegetated stoic, 
Slated for reprogramming, 
Saving me from a contentious after life. 
I was the intubated octopus at every orifice,
Tethered so I would not do violence to myself or others.

As time went on the concern deepened, 
My soul mate was asked to sign the papers,
I was sleeping too late, in my chaotic dreamland,
A mere heart beat in a shitty diaper.  
  
Death is total passivity and I was in Brueguel's world
The inert observer of passing horrors, 
The seeing mind's eye, helpless, disembodied,
The heart beat in the shitty diaper.

Then, out of a brightening haze I heard voices, "What is your name?"
"Do you know where you are?"
A nurse jabbed my arm for a blood sample, 
"It's nice to see yours eyes open."
I could have told her, they were never shut, 
I have seen too much, too soon.
They changed the dressing on my punctured neck-- 
they tried three times--the damned thing wouldn't stick.
I passed the swallow test --soft foods only.
I was waking from my dream soaked world.  
Back in the NOW, I feared sleep as I didn't want to go back
To that hideous limbo.
Now the octopus was being dismantled, 
The vegetated stoic was being animated, cured,
Now I could press the button for a diaper change.

My room was a darkened cloister where few came near,
I was the leper all knew to fear,
My nurses were Muslims in their shrouded gear,
Sweet voices whose hands
I wished to desperately hold. 

Then came the great news to behold. 
A black mystery lady appeared at my door.
She was handsome in her exquisite dress, 
and exotic head gear.
The administrative angel,
Brief and to the point,  
I was being transferred:
an escapee from the hospital's morgue;
one less toe tag in the cooler. 

Covid was a heavy date, 
The siren singing on the rocks of despair, 
Trying to make me an offer
Too tempting to refuse, but for the 
intervenors and their magic potions.
Was I spared to tell the pauper's tale, 
about life on the skin of a bubble, 
a witness who escaped the box.

As the heart heals the body
It infuses the head with rage: 
Feeling rage is to be alive, 
Among the living. 
Dancing on death's door step 
Takes the measure of life
In its various decrees.

Now I walk the glorious woods of my life after,
My two dogs sniffing their way forward. 
Now I get to walk the cathedral of the trees, spiking skyward,
Shafts of light cut through dark shadows.
Rotted stumps from olden times 
Tell their story as termites eat them
Into their earthen graves.
Soft breezes float through the trees,
Intrepid cedars whisper their reply
with leaves set a flutter by some unseen hand. 
In the blackened forests of winter 
Vivid green moss is the promise of Spring.   

My heart is strong,
My rage replete,
Directed at those who treat life so cheap;
Who wage war without compunction,
Who betray all,
Who live their soulless twilit deaths,
Who in their unholy gilded catacombs
Are the parasites, 
Tagging us all for the hubs of Hell
On forsaken Earth.

That it has come to this. 
Where are the interveners, 
as the jackals are in full force,
tearing at our tendered flesh? --author