Ash Wednesday! "Covert Nine Teen” Some Covid Poetry

By: Ash Catcher

I wanted to share some of my current pieces with you guys. This year has been incredibly hard on everyone, I am dying for a fucking hug, and I want things to just go back to as normal as possible. So please enjoy these two poems, Ill catch ya next Wednesday with something more meatless- y er. 

-Ash Catcher 

“Spoon Fed” 
Ash Catcher 
​sleep in since you can’t go out let your body decide what time the
day begins with a cup of tea settle into breakfast and spoon the
morning news down your throat while the kettle boils again
because you’ll need more caffeine if you mean to survive all
of the nothing on your to do list hanging hostile on the wall
paint on your eyebrows so you recognize yourself in the glass but
not the mascara that you know you won’t want to remove (though
you’ll have plenty of time) when it’s late and your eyes are closing
like every door and window in this necessary cell
pace the hallway lap the table tread the carpet cross the threshold
into insanity or (worse) apathy and turn to start again slowly tiptoe
towards the kitchen sinking feeling filling space in the stomach
you wish was as empty as this gray monotonous day full of
ambiguous unfulfilled hungers and unsatiated longings
scour room by room for hook or loom or else (to still shaking
hands) thread a needle and fill the fabric with enough stitches so
your 
mind stops unraveling in panic and tangling in paranoia
curse the dullness call home light the fuse let the countdown linger
hang up just before detonation run for cover savor the
dullness 
but only until realizing your haven too is home to a
grenade so run to find higher ground crawl deeper into the fissure of yourself
find the silver linings in the bullets piercing bone and marrow:
though your mind is a warzone the house has never been cleaner if
you get sick at least you’ll have an excuse not to eat dinner saving
money on gas means you can afford your therapy copays you
never were the biggest fan of social interaction anyway
“Pan-dramatic” 
Ash Catcher
Someone’s mother died from this virus,
and then it was someone’s son,
a brother, then a sister
and yet there were none,
who passed from this world,
with a loved one by their side,
to hear their last words,
and share their last cry.

They all died alone,
surrounded by strangers in masks,
all behind plastic shields,
performing their tasks,
and though they were caring,
they were not family,
who were prevented from being there,
due to COVID-19

This pandemic,
this plague,
this Corona insanity,
disrupting our lives,
impairing our humanity,
even altering death,
and how it’s observed,
as morgues replace a ceremony,
that each of them, 
deserved.

With not a soul at graveside,
standing close,
to say farewell,
no mass gathering after burial,
in this deadly viral Hell,
where social distance
not embrace,
is the intimacy of the day,
while a suffering human race
expresses their dismay.

So, a mother of 83
and a daughter of 48,
and the father of three small children,
leave this world
yet still await,
the goodbyes,
and mournful tears,
of the people they so loved,
who were all kept far away,
by this scourge 
I’m speaking of…

And each with the same obit,
where it is duly noted,
that in the year, 
two-thousand twenty,
they expired, 
due to COVID.