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