Covid Cabin Fever

I’ve lived a hundred days
wandering the familiar foreign
halls of home.
Questing for new activities
to alleviate the rising strain.
Everything’s become mundane.
I want to break free.
Go to that bar I always
meant to stop at.
I told myself, “It’s okay
I’ll do it some other day.”
Now there is no other day.
Today again.
Wandering the familiar foreign
hall of home.
Filling the house with new rituals
of Saturday morning jazz
and pancake breakfasts.
I fill the human need to roam
seeking out the huddled masses,
but other’s will not do their part.
Ignorance infects the innocent.
Orders cannot lift
until they are obeyed.
Shelter in place,
stay at home,
slow the spread,
flatten the curve.
Like zombies from a horror film
they lurch towards City Halls
reciting refrains,
bastardizing patriotic symbols,
calling to be liberated
when the only liberation from
this rebellion is a slow, agonizing death.
Isolated, forgotten, cast-off.
Slow suffocation, unclaimed bodies
buried in rows six by six by six.
I too miss coffee shops and amusement parks,
breweries and wine bars, bookstores and record shops.
Here I stay wandering
the familiar foreign
halls of
home
waiting for the day
of exit.
Returning to existence.
Visiting old comfortable haunts
instead of lurking in
these familiar foreign
halls of home.