hpn

Home Planet News Online
                                                               The Literary Review
                                                                          Issue 8

   Page 43


                                                                                                                                                                                      Swipe left        Swipe down

Cose Fan Tutte

When worldly chaos overwhelms
Russia manipulates democracy’s demise A plague hopscotches cross continents Lands in my Lombardian walled garden As if paper masks protect against
corona
Thank you Mozart, for this divine melodic distraction Operatic extravaganza of scheming lovers -
Men, as usual, orchestrating plots
Testing fidelity, equating one night stands with mortal sin
Women, doomed to be ingenue victims or saucy perpetrator
Save your fairy tales for the kids Everlasting love can bend to transgression
In 24 hours, an election can be stolen
A virus can transmute and spread
A heart can break, mend and cease to beat
May no woman ever die of love. Cose fan tutte.

  Ilka Scobie__


____________________________

Corona Time

The full Worm Moon, robins return to
feast on emerging earthworms
the Perigree moment
when lunar transit is closest to Earth,
our troubled planet where a pandemic simmers

Told to avoid crowds, I skip art fairs
Still ride the subway to school Classrooms awash in pumped sanitizer
Assiduously used by the brilliant children A stray cough or muffled sneeze

buried in itinerant elbows resounds viral doom

Jet setting virus sweeps from congested heart of an Eastern city to the flat rich
plains of Padana Pianura,
Suburban contagion circles my hometown

Today the sun rose an hour later
Daylight savings time ceaselessly springs us forward into Corona time, the
crown that no one covets

  Ilka Scobie__

Human Nature
for Ugo Rondinone

When sunshine bakes bluestone slabs, gathering warmth to obdurate core
Rock then lifts, lightens
As chill seeps and corrodes, the stone contracts Consolidates quarried power
This stone tribe of unmoving camaraderie Loyal hearts transcend face or gender Standing, unbowed in architectural shadow Deliberately concreted walls enclose
Freer then flesh and blood voyeurs
Who proudly place objects upon manicured lawns (preferably overlooking the sea)
These tender gifts, like verdant lichen
secretly await visibility

  Ilka Scobie__

_________________

How Democracy Is Lost

Watch America disintegrate Splintered by fear, fueled
with hate

a dictator President complicit Senate Opposition impotent
Greed bloated economy

Civility outmoded
Materialism corroded
we acquire, we covet, we spend trying to forget the
inevitable end

Old white oligarchs
posture for power
Which stupidly, passively we accede

As evil reigns
Justice falters Freedom's final bleed

  Ilka Scobie__