COVID-19
COVID-19, you brought me a new word
Quarantine, I didn’t know you
Thanks to you, my English has improved
But if you were a person
You would have acted a horrid part in a scene
A grotesque standing in the corner to grasp a passerby
COVID-19, you would be an aye-aye.
First I ran unemployed
And then my boss tells me no money
All the little savings are done
Just in the first two weeks of the lockdown
And do u know why?
Because I thought it would take two weeks
It has now passed three months
One time I didn’t give daddy back his balance
Because I needed data to send this poem
If COVID-19 you were an aquatic
You would be a blobfish.
I am now at my ancestral home
Stuck here with my parents
They never believe a child grows
To be sent to wash utensils
Have gotten tired of dad
I have fallen out with mum
She sees mistakes in everything she sets her eyes on
I am going back to 2019
I will not manage 2020
COVID-19, if you were an insect
You would be a beetle.
Now, don’t talk about the government
Its priority is to keep people safe and health
Which it has tried with its lockdown
Okay, let them give us food
But they gave my neighbor
They said I am well off
Then give us the masks you promised
Am a truly a hungry troubled youth
Too uncontrollable to even wash my hands
COVID-19, if you were a god
Indeed the Lucifer.
By Jesse Musulube
Poet, writer, activist, leader