Arts
In this episode I share two 'poems for a pandemic' I've recently written, and I chat to my friend Marissa who also wrote one after I asked my poet friends to join me in writing these. Below are the words to Marissa's poem: The Hopeful Calm, Marissa Niven~~~Surreal.Definition:Having the qualities of surrealismExample:To live through a time you know history will look back on,Whilst doing nothing noteworthyAnd yet in doing soMaking historyThis situation is surreal to meYou got people too scared to go into the streets,While neighbours ignore fears and say cheers to breaking the rules,You'll find no social distancing hereShopping aisles turned to fight clubs,City streets to forgotten histories,Pharmacies look like crime scenes, taped up cause the visual makes it impossible to ignore the new boundariesMaybe that's why there's a reminder on every screen...News headlines never change,Just the numbers do,And it's easy to forget that each number is a name, and each name is a person, and each person is a story-...a story with an unsatisfying end…And still we have leaders who manage to pretend that things aren't so badAnd I wonderDo they see the same news we do?Do they see their people dropping in the streets?Hear the pleas of their doctors to help them?Or do they only care about who can buy the best publicity and make profit from tragedy?And as is the way with Tragedy,She brought her brother RageAngrily he searches for someone to blame for his sister's griefBut blame is a funny thingFor rage leads to blame, and blame leads to rage, and all too soon tragedy is born again anew,And I fear for the people who those grieving will blameA 2 year old stabbed in a parking lot can attest to thatDrowning in the pains of the world,And the ignoranceAnd the griefIt's easy to believe that hope she has left us…But ask Pandora what remained…When the box is opened,And the evils have been unleashedHope still stays.A quiet but steady light to fight the fright of perpetual nightAnd in this wayWe look past the noise of the world in panicAnd find the hopeful calmWe find it in the music played from balconies in cities,Closed down but never forgotten,In wild eyes of nature as she sends her children to reclaim what we have borrowed,In the sky's, clear for the first time in how many years,In the smiles of children, reminders of innocence still safe from all of thisAnd with our quiet hopeful calm,We wait for this to passFor while this fear may be loudIt is hope who's music lasts.