The tattooed
Bee-sting lips
Bling bling wannabe
Influencers walk the empty
Covid city streets taking selfies,
But no one is watching them,
Their existence now meaningless.

Living in a dystopian Covid world,
They have forgotten their souls.
Hollow husks with empty sockets,
And they dream of Gucci and Fiorucci,
Stripper chic and steroid smiles,
Muscle cars and American rap,
And they look at the outside
World with disdain as they
Await a golden Delta dawn.

While in the outside world
One Euro houses in dead
Italian towns are for sale,
And educated young Afghan
Women burn their degrees
And await the primitive
Slavery of Islam,
And the soccer mums
Of Melbourne angry
That they are not
Allowed to go outside
And play in the parks,
Or the fat westerners
Annoyed that their vacation
Trips have been wrecked due
To lockdowns in
Mediterranean
Towns.

While feral hippies,
Anti-vaxxers ,
MGTOW men,
And conspiracy nutjobs
Froth at suggestions
Of vaccinations,
And hardcore
Jesus freaks
In the heartland
Refuse vaccines
Because for them
It is devil juice,
The mark of the
Beast and the
End of the world;
And they all hold
Hands dancing
Around a burning
Effigy of Bill Gates,
In fear of their
Own shadows.

While somewhere
On a Greek island,
On a cozy balcony
Of a cozy apartment,
A poet is surrounded by
His books, paintings and music;
With the scent of the nearby ocean
And the time-honoured rhythm
Of Greek island life playing outside,
Detached from the fear and shadows
That now consume the outside world.

Stripped bare of
Illusions and obligations,
The poet’s insight is clear;
And he sees the truth of it all,
And he considers it all
On a hot summer's day
With a cold can of Fix beer,
Hard cinnamon biscuits,
Poetry books of D.H.Lawrence
And Nikiforos Vrettakos scattered
On a small balcony table.

The warm citrus musical notes
Floating overhead from passionate
Greek love songs of a bygone era,
And he sees the waves of pandemics
That have washed over humanity
Over the past several thousand years,
That the current pandemic won’t
Be the last and he accepts it all
And laughs for he needs nothing else,
Realising that life is absurd
And lives in the moment,
In a Covid paradise.

While the wannabes,
Conspiracy, anti-vaxxer
Nutjobs, Jesus freaks,
And the MGTOW men
All hide in corners
Trembling like cowards
In a total capitulation
Of their own humanity
Awaiting for the beast
And the end of days.

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The photograph that partly inspired the poem, by Nikos Laios

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The Silent Symphony
A collection of poems and paintings,
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Ida & Her Magic Camera
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