Expiry Date

It doesn’t creep

in the middle of the night.

It’s not that cold shiver

you experience as the

first golden leaves fall

at the end of summer.

It’s not the cold ache

biting into your skin

in the middle of winter,

or the silence that slips in

behind the laughter.

Our fallibility falls like dust motes,

coating one and all equally

in the inevitable: our expiration.

Copyright held by Eloise De Sousa (2021)

Living

Don’t go out. Don’t go near. Don’t uncover. Just don’t!

We are living the dream.

Those festivities we avoided with such flippant negligence is now a distant memory.

Zoom. Zoom. Google Meet. Teams. Whoop!

Again.

Repeat.

What a way to communicate.

Jokes agitate as Tiktok concentrates the bored.

Meetings with half-dressed workers fade to tirades for and against the vaccines and face masks.

The sound of tumbleweed rolls across school room floors.

Stillness catches on the feet of silent students sitting through online lessons, pretending to care.

Each household occupant mesmerised by screens – all shapes to fit all sizes – fuelling the need to educate and replicate finances.

We grow as people.

News becomes the main course of entertainment; briefings from the Government is seen as prime time television. Yet, it plays out like a soap opera, portraying predictable plots with caricatured speakers grinding out soliloquies of fortitude to the nation.

We grow weary.

‘Get children back to school!’

‘Vaccinate the vulnerable!’

‘Brexit!’

‘Nothing was done fast enough!’

Hyperbole flows in rivers of information, confirmation and confrontation from all corners of the continent. Unsettled murmurs of incompetency grow as fear is replaced by anger. Explanations and apologies hold as much value as a bag of Dolly Mix.

In the meantime, we count the souls like lost teeth.

More bitter than sweet.

Life becomes hard to swallow.

Copyright ©Eloise De Sousa (2021). All rights reserved.

I am the virus

I am the virus.

I need to be contained.

My venom spreads with every word I say.

I am the virus.

I wish I was contained.

The spikes are taken out of the wheels and I’m definitely not sane.

I am the virus.

You’ll wish I was contained.

I’ll make your every word the last one in this endless game.

I was the virus.

I’m all alone.

Not that I regret your number calling on my phone.

I was the virus.

I followed your decree.

Now your head sits alone on my bare knee.

I am the virus

I am the virus.

I need to be contained.

My venom spreads with every word I say.

I am the virus.

I wish I was contained.

The spikes are taken out of the wheels and I’m definitely not sane.

I am the virus.

You’ll wish I was contained.

I’ll make your every word the last one in this endless game.

I was the virus.

I’m all alone.

Not that I regret your number calling on my phone.

I was the virus.

I followed your decree.

Now your head sits alone on my bare knee.

The Far Away Land

THE FAR AWAY LAND

 

Strands

floating,

reaching out –

hair in a breeze,

holding onto cliffs,

their jagged angles like

shards of glass, all broken and

sprinkled with hot ice that can burn

exposed shivering fingers and toes;

where whispering winds steal my breath away.

 

 

Copyright held by ©Eloise De Sousa (2020)

 

If the World was ending, you’d come over – right?

If the world was ending, I’d come over, right

Ready to spend the entire night

Never having to say good-bye,

Knowing you’d be the last face I’d see tonight.

 

Would you save me as your final list:

The person who says: ‘to hell with it?’

The one you who you always thought you’d celebrate?

The person who held it all together –

wasn’t easy saying ‘I’m jealous’, yeah,

Even though I haven’t been around for it.

 

Yet, I know, you know, we know

That you’ll be coming round tonight.

If all the world knows, it’s going to be

time to get out of sight…

 

If the world was ending, I’d come over, right

Ready to spend the entire night

Never having to say good-bye

Knowing you’d be the last face I’d see tonight.

 

 

Copyright held by ©Eloise De Sousa (2020)

Your Turn

www.instagram.com/p/B-HWjL6AzFa/

Vitriol, chamomile for my soul

Sour tasting words expounded,

Sweet saccharine sounds;

A melody of chaffing rhetoric,

Holding you, tightly bound.

RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #274 Air&Lantern.

It has been a while since I’ve participated in Ronovan’s haiku challenge. What a great way to celebrate poetry.

Here is my attempt for the challenge words Air and Lantern:

Shapeless serpent breathes,

Blowing hope, up and away –

Lighting the darkness.

 

If you’d like to try your hand at a haiku, here are Ronovan’s helpful tips:

https://ronovanwrites.com/2019/10/07/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-274-airlantern/

Have a go.

Inspiration at 3am

This poem woke me up and wouldn’t leave me alone. The rhythm feels slightly off towards the last line but it insists it’s following the pattern of lilting and drifting, rhyming within to produce sound and feeling.

Let me know what you think.