ISSUE II: Odyssey

POETRY
PROSE
POETRY
Deus ex machina;
A god from a machine.
COGNITION
A nurse; a cog in a machine.
Forced to keep going,
Even when about to break down.
Overworked, meltdown, turn around,
And in a blink of an eye a life lost.
The machine is rigged.
A system that consumes people whole.
Protection; a word heard too often,
But not listened to.
Take time to take care, to be overcareful.
Protect them by protecting yourself.
Show that outer strength.
A disguise; unrecognisable and dehumanised.
The personal armour of PPE.
Blue plastic gloves holding your hand.
Blue plastic gloves shielding the face
Of a nurse chocking back a sob of sorry
That turns into a cough.
Uncle Jay working in intensive care;
Spread across twelve floors.
There is a flaw in the engine.
The intensity has become critical.
On his commute home, on the train,
He replays the trauma of the day.
Only to walk in the door to his husband
And slap on a brave face.
Tired eyes sagging under goggles;
Exhausted from personal risk.
Battle wounds indented his face,
And they won’t fade because of crisis.
Huge numbers hit him hard.
Helplessly, striving to maintain
That NHS grit. It’s hard.
By KATHERINE EBBS
Although he is thinking,
‘I don’t get paid enough for this!
This isn’t what I signed up for.
They didn’t teach me this in med school.’
He carries on – a keyworker.
He’s dealing with the unimaginable.
A conveyer belt of bodies.
Some things you just can’t speak about.
The sheer scale of suffering indigestible.
People just dying and dying and…dying.
Nervously acting.
Who gets the oxygen tank,
When seven people’s breathing falters?
A patient moved across the country,
Just so they can breathe.
There’s no time to take a sigh of relief,
Not with the night terrors.
Trapped in a cage with the water rising.
Beds constantly filling up and all are gasping.
There’s no room for errors.
There’s no room, full-stop.
A bed; a priceless possession.
He heals you, but he can’t
Heal himself from this.
Death gives no lunchtime breaks.
Inner turbulence revealed;
Cracks finally break.
A face mask finally falls apart,
And there is no longer perplex left.
The fragile machine finally
Runs out of fuel.
It’s running on empty.
A little girl finds her Mum crying
Whilst she dries her hair.
She said the hospital called.
Nan wasn’t coming back.
She had broken on the phone,
And it wasn’t the landlines fault.
Helen was sixty-four.
They didn’t get to say goodbye,
Not even through a screen.
She was oblivious to night and day.
Cared for by scared strangers,
Who turned her over,
So her scarred lungs filled up
With air.
Turning, turning, turning,
Day after day.
But then her levels plummeted.
It’s about what comes with a death too.
Each person with their own story.
Dignity plummeted.
They had to wear masks
To Helen’s funeral.
On the way, they passed
Five ambulances.
The blue lights flashing fast –
A warning sign to others
Not to end up like them.
No hymns to be heard.
A silent desperation in the sunrise.
Red anger. Danger.
The last rays of her last days
Of the last sun.
The girl lay by her Nan’s side
A bunch of purple heather.
Levels rising; it has reached its peak.
She isn’t just another Covid statistic.
She is someone’s relative,
Someone precious, someone who gave light.
It isn’t right, that another line went flat.
She isn’t just a line on a graph.
And the little girl murmured,
(When she told her schoolteacher
Her Nanny had died),
‘That’s a sad story isn’t it?’
This bereavement was avoidable.
Boris takes a seven-mile bike ride.
Celebrities go to Dubai ‘on business’.
Hancock plays footie.
There’s blood on their hands.
Mass casualties caused by the Tories.
They chose to ignore, and merely applause.
They cut down on medical restrictions.
They made cuts and arrived far too late.
They chose capital at
The costly expense of lives.
Failing to lead as people fail to breathe.
You aren’t forgiven.
We won’t look away.
Conscripted to fight on the frontline;
It’s your battle too, and right now,
You’re fighting on the side of the enemy.
Colleagues working side-by-side.
Soldiering on.
Hooking up people to their new
Breathing machines.
When will those people wake up?
No one knows. The virus is real.
Wake up and see.
You sit and clap for keyworkers
As their reward.
But they can’t hear you –
They’re stuck on a ward.
A planet mourning
The life that could’ve been,
A life that was, and lives lost.
A reunion that will never happen;
The giant mourner.
It comes in waves.
How many waves will it take
Until it drowns you and
You can’t come up for air?
The daily death toll; it isn’t fair.
Death has taken its toll.
Tiers and tears.
Stop this from staying the same
For years and years.
Stop the dread of death.
Stop the invisible danger
From getting scarier and bigger.
Don’t hesitate to do the right thing.
The NHS is our body of tubes.
Our life support is them.
We are all a cog in the machine;
We can’t stop it from turning.
A god from a machine;
Deus ex machina.
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