Inspired by Moonwashed Weekly Prompt #120 – Exquisite & Reena’s Exploration Challenge #260
a crap year unfolds
desiring the exquisite
our hope was wanting
Pandemic Blues
Tag: covid-19
Goutam Dutta
Autumn
Season of fall
Few fallen leaves cling to us…
We carry the memories.
Lockdown during pandemic
Lockdown…
Hospital full of Corona patients
Empty local train.
Re-opening post 2nd wave
Post lockdown….
Swimming towards morning walkers
Fishes at the lake.
Twilight hues
Vibrant twilight hues…
The sky resplendent in pink
Conch shells herald dusk
Riding through country roads
Swathe of green and blue
Hues bordering the road…
Traveller’s delight.
Onset of Monsoon
Onset of monsoon…
Parched earth scans the horizon
Sweat oozes from pores.
Onset of monsoon…
Blotch of black at horizon
Dance of the peacock.
Onset of monsoon…
Dark clouds come floating with breeze
Fingers type a poem.
Onset of monsoon…
Hanging raindrops swing with breeze
Shades of grey all day.
~~~
Goutam is passionate about poetry and writes whenever something or someone touches his heart. His poetry finds space in a number of anthologies, including The Sound of Brilliance. Hues of Life (Notion Press) is another collection of his poetic works. Living in Kolkata, India, he can be reached at gdutta17@gmail.com Goutam was first featured in The Short of It on October 23, 2020.
Submissions are now closed but if you’d like to be featured on The Short of It in the future,
click here for the submissions guidelines.
#TheShortofIt
Rejoining The Human Race
Inspired by Sadje’s What do you see #82 and VJ’s Weekly Challenge – Read on
old faces reappear
with new ones making an entrace too
rejoicing the changed times
at big city meet ups
for celebrations freeing us
to be ourselves once again
sorrows and stories exchanged
hugs too
reconnecting to what once was
and holding on tighter now
a new reality begins for us
with renewed hope for a better future
Shituation
20/20 doesn’t mean what it used to
hope was sucked out of our beings
drowning us in metaphorical waters
the despair vibrated in the gasps of the dying
can we recover…
politics, and the anger it fueled
climate change, and the natural disasters which ensued
sickness, and the devastation that followed
all of it ravaged the land, the body and the heart
i hope we can recover…
but there are stronger ones among us
survivors, come what may
we’ll need to lean on them
or forever lose our way
we can recover…
Thanks to my hubs for the title of this piece! I’d wanted to write one final piece about the year 2020 but hadn’t found what I would call an acceptable way to lead into it. Recently, while having a discussion, I misspoke trying to utter the word “situation.” Great discussion and a title was born!
This Year
I survived the toilet paper panic.
Duane L. Herrmann
NEW “NORMAL”
Zoom here,
Zoom there,
Going nowhere, and yet anywhere!
UP AND…
Little spider climbing
up the air
on invisible string.
SPECIAL FRIEND
Gentle purring indicates
it is awake
soon
will need to be fed.
I care for its needs,
it can then help me –
we are a team:
my friend,
my chainsaw.
FOREST ENCHANTMENT
The man has a place in the country, a few acres. Part of it is meadow, but part is hillside with trees. The meadow is a nice open space, but it is the trees that enchant him. Their shade and the breeze particularly attract him. They are his refuge from a life of stress. A friend posted a photo she had found of someone who also had trees, and in their roots had placed tiny elfin doors, windows and even walkways, handmade but exquisite. He would do that too!! They would add a magical touch to his magical place.
SO MUCH UPSIDE DOWN
He sits at home imprisoned by disease, yet his world has expanded more than he ever imagined. Technology connects him to people and places in the world where he could never otherwise have gone. The curse and blessings are mixed. He can see and speak with people who had moved far away, yet cannot hug his grandbabies. It has become a strange world. Among his pastimes has become a search for himself. Not an inner, existential search, but a search for evidence of physical accomplishments. With the internet, he can search for his published work he would otherwise never have known about. It still puzzles him that writings of his have been posted from one site to another after their initial acceptance. He doesn’t mind – he is surprised. As a child, his mother refused him any identity of his own. Now, he finds he exists all over the world. Amazing!!!
A NAME IS…
“English was good enough for Jesus, it’s all I need, and you’d better stay away from that foreign stuff too!” Cecilia’s Father was vehement in his pronouncement.
“It rhymes with Hawaii,” Cecilia sighed and finished. She had just mentioned to her father the names of Bahá‘u’lláh and Bahá’í, that the first meant ‘the Glory of God’ and the second, ‘Follower of the Glory.’
“English names don’t have meanings,” he refuted.
“Armstrong, who had a strong arm? Boatright, who built boats? Smith, the village blacksmith? Most names have meanings, we just don’t know them.”
“Still, that’s foreign stuff.”
“Granpa was born in Germany. That’s foreign!”
“Well, that’s diff….”
“And Jesus wasn’t born in Kansas.”
At that, her father had to grin. He couldn’t argue there.
“Every religion is new some time. People living in the Roman Empire thought the name of Jesus was strange and new.”
“You win,” he grinned lovingly.
~~~
Herrmann aspires to be a hermit, but would miss his children, grandchildren and a few friends. He is known to carry baby kittens in his mouth, pet snakes, and converse with owls, but is careful not to anger them! A traumatic, abusive childhood embellished with dyslexia, ADHD, cyclothymia, now, PTSD. This is Duane’s second feature on The Short of It.
If you’d like to be featured on The Short of It, click here for the submissions guidelines.
#TheShortofIt
Published at LIQ Project!
Honored to have Life Is Off and Taking My Temperature accepted for this project! It is so important that we have places to store the feelings and the emotions this year of upheaval has given us. Hopefully it will gain us insight for what not to do in the future should this type of life-altering event occur again.
I’d recommend you browse through all the other submissions too. The creativity, the honesty, the heartbreak of all their experiences is rich with what we would call “The Human Experience.” So much resonates with the fear, the uncertainty and just how much life stays the same too. We share in order to survive.
If you have something you’d like to share, please do become a part of this project!
Submit your story
Strangely Forward
like out of a sci-fi film
the tension builds
as our reality becomes an unrealistic
and an unwanted fantasy
we’d never have dreamt up willingly
personal habits mutated overnight, for some
people affected before our eyes, everyone
all steps ventured became tentative
a feeling of a strange abnormal that couldn’t be defined
the markers of who to be kept changing
many were lost, not just the dead
their lives upended with new realities of despair
retreating into themselves, forced there
alone with the grim reaper
loved ones watching from afar, helpless
covid-19 will cease to be eventually
oh, but the cost of the lessons learned
as mentally, emotionally and physically we heal
the scars of devastation will linger
the pain of the losses great
as we, the left behind, begin to emerge anew
Image Credits – Unsplash
#1 CDC
#2 Hello I’m Nik
#3 Chloe Evans
#4 Edwin Hooper
Our Reality
2020 – the very definition of crazy.
Forgive the shameless plug for this wonderful book!!
If you prefer paperback, click here or Kindle, click here. And remember, I’d be happy to Authorgraph it digitally, if you choose to purchase an electronic version instead.
Thank you for your support! 🙂
Goutam Dutta
Indian summer
Fallen leaves, yellowed.
Hot winds blast during the day.
Sweet Mangoes beckon.
Festival of Colours-Holi
Hues of fire on trees.
Festival of hues on cheeks.
Pristine moonlit night.
Monsoon Hues-India
Wet stray on road,
Searching for shelter from rain.
Thunderclaps exhort.
An entry in Lockdown Dairy
Bare roads, sans human.
Nature sets up symphony,
With birds, bees and breeze.
The beautiful Taj Mahal-India
On Yamuna’s bank,
Love’s monument pristine white;
With the moonbeams vie.
Indian Winter nights
Winter nights-
Sitting around a fire
Waiting for the morn.
A cough,
Cold air’s whiplash;
Invites sufferers’ curse.
Long nights
In a donated quilt.
A homeless prays in sleep.
~~~
Goutam is passionate about poetry and writes whenever something or someone touches his heart. He lives in Kolkata, India and writes poetry in English, Hindi and Bengali. His book on English poetry “Hues of Life” (Notion Press) can be found at Amazon. He can be reached at gdutta17@gmail.com. Goutam blogs at Straight from Heart.
If you’d like to be featured on The Short of It, click here for the submissions guidelines.
#TheShortofIt
I Write Her 