Eyes for a Mouth
Our faces
have gone
into hiding.
Parts
unknown.
Left to our
own devices,
Corona has
abandoned us
to our natures
and so we've
traded
our mouths
for eyes.
Now we are
the sum
(and substance)
of what
we’ve buried;
unintended gardens
of ravenous
red
forget-me-nots.
Outside, mummies
are begging
the streets
in disregard
of the laws
of the moon.
Don’t they know
the moon is
not a stopper
but an opening,
a mouth.
Only at night
have we ever been
so wide open.
We are all
in rags,
masks muffling
our every response
along with
our fetid breaths
as we recycle
our own air
and subsist on
a born-again
oxygen.
If there is
to be
no more
mouth to mouth,
then who
can save us?
How will I
know my brother
gagged behind
a wall?
How to
love another
when kissing
becomes
this suspect?
Our masks keep
our mouths
in their place.
Now
I am all eyes
interpreting only
half the truth.
My unseen
“How are you?”
no longer answered
with anything
but an ironically
hampered
“I’m well”.
When
I’m well is barely
possible.
And yet I am.
You need
only rephrase me.
I am at the bottom
of this well
because
only now has it
become possible
to know what
I must do.
Peter Valentyne
September 29th, 2020
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