July-August 2024 blog Time Off/Off Time-Covid 19 Poems:
As you know, COVID is very much alive and still lurking about on this planet earth, and for this reason, I am sharing with you poems I submitted to the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, and which I read at the Antigua and Barbuda 15th Annual Conference/During and After Covid, 2022
Time Off/Off Time-Covid 19 Poems
I am not a scientist. I am a humble poet born in English Harbour, Antigua, and blessed with the opportunity to have lived in the US Virgin Islands, the USA, Liberia (West Africa) the UK, and now live in Switzerland. It is a privilege to share my reflections on Covid-19 with you. The impact of Covid-19 on my life is shared by way of poetry. It represents a microcosm of what others have experienced.
Harry Belafonte, among other calypso singers, once performed a song called “Man Smart but Women Smarter,” but in 2020 Covid-19 arrived and appeared smarter than us all. It has become like our shape-shifting folklore characters, soucouyant, ligahoo, for example, returning in the guise of variants. Most of us are masked and isolating, while the virus is seeking us out. Unlike our folklore, which long ago dictated our lives and haunted our dreams, COVID-19 cannot temporarily be dismissed as a simple case of mind over matter. It is very real.
Still, in some quarters, people believe that is not the case. There are segments of our population who are convinced that governments, and global organizations, are planting the idea of a deadly virus in our heads. They are convinced that vaccinations are the government’s way to control the minds of its citizens via the implantation of devices. For some praying is enough to keep the virus at bay. Unfortunately, many are learning the hard way.
We are now exploring how to best live with Covid-19. Our freedom has, on an-and-off basis, been curtailed by imposed rules of survival during its surges. We have seen the ravages of it.
In parts of the world, large populations have been hit hard by this virus. They have had to cope with the disruption of their social environment—loss of family members, jobs, homes. Due to Covid-19, socially distant learning and working have become the social norm. We have had to change our lifestyles and become more dependent on technology.
The poems
below reflect my own response to the arrival of and living with Covid-19 over
the past year and a half. They shine a specific light on my experience and my
reaction to the pandemic in Switzerland where I live. I hope others are able to
see their recent past in mine. I have
not yet been deeply impacted by it when compared to others. Perhaps I have had
a lucky escape.
The poems
submitted are “Time Off/Off Time,” “Inside Out,” “A Different Kind of Pied
Piper”, “Silent Passengers on a Bus”, “Mask On, Watches Off”, “Home Is Not
Always a Haven,” “Staying Alive.” and “Let
Us Ride This Tsunami of Change.”
Time Off/Off Time
I have given my watch a break,
taken it off my hand,
so it can unwind.
It no longer needs
to accompany me on walks,
to classes, appointments.
These days, I stroll without destination.
The watch sits on my dresser,
not keeping me alert,
its ticking slower.
Purposeless, its battery
has ceased to count hours,
chase minutes.
In Spring 2020,
a force of nature,
a clandestine stalker,
stopped us in our tracks.
Ordered indoors,
we are compelled to slow our tempo.
Unseen by human eyes,
it moves with speed,
not ceasing its killing spree.
We speculate as to why
it sees us as its enemy.
There could be many causes—
our transgressions
against this planet are countless,
often makes us pause.
While not living daily by the clock,
we pray the silent hunter
will take off time too.
© Althea Romeo Mark
Published in Lockdown Anthology
A Different Kind of Pied Piper
It arrived. We did not see it cross the 2019 border.
We did not hear its whistle like a creeping hurricane.
It did not come with drumming rain nor sliding
hurtling mud.
It didn’t rattle or shake like an earthquake.
Nor was it a spinning, crushing cone,
gobbling up and spitting out homes.
It didn’t spit fire, didn’t spew swallowing ash.
Neither was it the creeping grey mist in a film of
doom.
It did not shout the bloody cries of war
nor arrived in any of nature’s devastating costumes.
It sent its unseen army out not just to scout.
But chose those who could not resist its call.
They fell in line behind it.
Many felt its hellish whip that left them racked with
pain.
Phlegm filled up throats like a clogged moat.
Its victims remain secluded while it stole their
breath.
And countless followed the invisible Pied Piper of
death.
Published in Breaking the Silence Anthology
Inside Out
Our world forced indoors, we wear our lives inside
out.
Its stitches laid bare, we see the rough seams of
routines.
Escape routes blocked by invisible wardens
who dangle their power in our faces,
we learn to navigate confined spaces.
Conversations are no longer fleeting.
We are not coming from or hurrying to work.
We are not too tired to speak.
There is no need for procrastination.
Time is more elastic.
We worry that the ugly within will rear its head
like a gargoyle in a prominent place.
Life inside out becomes an overheated furnace
upon which we clamp a lid
to suppress fury, fiery word and fists.
But let’s dig deep within ourselves to extract
buried or neglected talent.
Let’s write the words that define this time,
unearth the painter, seamstress,
sculptor, wood-carver,
clear the mental wood shavings
hiding the carpenter,
dig up the deep thinker,
tackle the piled “to-read” books.
Turn on the light within you.
There can be fortune in misfortune
when our lives are inside out.
Published in Resistance: Dove Tales International
Journal of the Arts, Summer 2020, Issue III, A Writing for Peace
Publication, McNaughton & Gunn
Silent Passengers on a Bus
On the bus,
we keep our distance.
It is our defense,
it is our resistance
to unwanted passengers
we cannot see.
We have been warned
they are our mortal enemies.
So, we sit six feet apart
our hearts in quiet palpitation.
When we alight
we breathe deeply in relief,
finally free from
what is deemed
close quarters.
But sometimes
unseen passengers
get out too
and like fiendish ghosts
follow us to our homes,
sneak into our doors
like stealthy thieves.
New Thief on Every Block
The sun plays hide and seek
between trees and branches.
A lurking enemy
plays hide and seek too.
There are no safe spaces.
It tackles the weak,
knocks them down
with a potent punch,
steal what is most valuable.
We wait for proclamations
to lift some restrictions
placed on our movement.
They will allow us to roam
on short leashes.
There are dragnets out to catch
and tame the new thief,
but until it is restrained
we remain penned in
by the fear of losing
our family,
our friends,
our lives
so dear to us.
© Althea Mark-Romeo
Masks on, Watches off
I am masked.
My kente cloth face covering
is a vibrant green-yellow-red.
But it is not carnival.
I am not playing mass
nor jumping up in a crowd
behind a pling-plang-plang steel-pan-band.
Celebrations of the living
have been scratched off calendars.
Celebrations of the dead, paused.
I am masked, protecting lives,
keeping death at bay,
mourning my curtailed freedom.
Covid-19 is the jumbi
keeping us off the streets,
stalking us day and night.
Its grip is soucouyant-deadly.
No religion, no obeah man,
no heathen ritual, no prayers,
no chanting, no burning of sage
has yet sent this Covid-Jumbi
back to its cave.
Masks on, watches off.
During this time not dictated by schedules,
normal living has screeched to a halt.
We nah wan’ fo dead.
While Covid-Jumbi is seeking us,
we are hiding in our homes,
skirting each other on the streets.
Staying alive is our new mantra,
is the message scrolling in our heads.
There will be time for carnival,
time for bacchanal,
when Covid-19 Jumbi
is no longer hungry, angry.
Mask on! Watches off.
Home Is Not
Always a Haven
Death has arrived invisibly cloaked.
We are ordered by authority
to hide indoors and safeguard our health
from an enemy we cannot see.
Home is our haven.
We cannot meet and embrace,
but we converse via phones and messaging apps,
see and hear those placed high in our hearts.
We binge on our favorite TV shows.
From a safe place we order what we desire.
Packages and shopping can be delivered
by the masked not out to rob us.
The wealthy in every country,
could jet off to a private island,
drive to a secluded farm,
a country house behind high gates
to live in leisurely isolation.
But not everyone was given time
to put brakes on their livelihoods,
pack pantries, seek masks and sanitizers.
Human life is not deemed sacred in every land.
People caught off guard by Covid-19 proclamations
are belittled, beaten back with whips,
tear gas, bullets and ordered to their homes.
Home is not always a haven,
it is a jam-packed room, a park bench,
a small space on the sidewalk,
a carton box under a bridge,
a place of diseases and viruses.
Published in Musings of a Pandemic Anthology
Staying
Alive 2020
We wear masks that fog our glasses,
block our breathing,
hold back the droplets
of our coughs, and sneezes.
We’re cautioned against hugging those we love
so we don’t pass on invisible death
that clings to our palms, puckered lips,
our reaching fingertips.
We sanitize our hands
when entering and departing buildings
so death doesn’t cross the finish line
the same time as we do.
We skirt passers-by on the street
and try to be discreet in our dodging
‘cause death is attached to everything.
Staying alive has become our goal,
the mantra dancing in our head
and we walk to the Bee-Gees* beat,
‘cause to stay alive, we have to put
the wings of heaven on our feet.
Published
in Musings of A Pandemic Anthology
Waiting for the Outcome
We did not dream this.
Soothsayers, palm readers and
their cohorts did not warn that 2020
would arrive clothed in death.
We did not fathom
that banishment to safe quarters
would be forced upon us
by an enemy, invisible and fatal.
Life and death shaped by our will,
we look out of the same window,
but see a different view.
Some see freedom
as the right
to stare death in the face;
others see freedom,
as the right to practice
social restraint.
We watch the mask-less
mingle not at a distance.
The right to die, they insist,
is their proud privilege.
The masked do not see cowardice
in their
choice.
They are determined
to keep death at bay.
Liberty is remaining
among the living.
We look forward to the end
of this horror film
we have been cast in.
Let Us Ride This Tsunami of Change
Each day we wake to unsettling news.
We cannot escape the darkness it brings.
Death by Covid-19 is piling.
This culprit, on its killing spree, is still at large.
Our scientists are the bounty-hunters
offered large sums for its capture,
and the curtailing of its mutating.
We pray for a cure to its deadly strangling.
And though fettered by our fears
and uncontrolled events
that have swept us off our feet,
we will ride this tsunami of change.
We want to live to tell the tale
about abiding by restricting social demands,
about overcoming these dire times.
We are survivors of loss to earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions and hurricanes.
We will move freely again,
breathe freely again.
Althea Romeo Mark
Althea Romeo Mark is the winner of the Vincent Cooper Literary Prize.
The Vincent Cooper Literary Prize is given to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by celebrated post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau Brathwaite to describe the vernacular language born in the Caribbean). The 2023 recipient is a prize-winning poet and fiction writer, educator Althea Romeo Mark for her short story,” Saving Papa Rojas from the Deathbed Flirt.” Romeo-Mark is an Antiguan-born educator and internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in the Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia, England, and Switzerland since 1991. She writes short stories and personal essays in addition to poetry and has been published. in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua, and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, USA, England, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Colombia, India, the U.K., Kenya, Liberia, Romania, and Switzerland.Althea was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in 2024 It is one of the most prestigious contests in poetry. As Kelsay Books publishers stated,” We are happy to submit your book representing Kelsay Books poetry collections published in 2023. https://www.hofferaward.com/
She was awarded the Arts and Science Poetry Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Curtea De Arges, Romania, 2017. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by the Editorial Board of The Caribbean Writer in June 2009 for publication (short story “Bitterleaf,”) in Volume 22, 2009. Short story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher English Short Story Competition/Switzerland 1995; Poetry Award for the poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahoga Community Writers Conference. 1974, Scholarship Award. Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. 1971.
Terrific, impressive selection. So many original and unexpected connections, images, ways to approach the dread and uncertainty we all faced, but also the hopes we entertained and solutions we found.... Phillis G.
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