Hawk, Dove, Mask, and Glove

It's the time again, war.
A time of pestilence, a looming famine, so much death and, still coming, more.

Then was the time of hawk and dove.
Now is the time of mask and glove.

We called then, our young boys out to war.

Yet here, on our soil, this sickness has now killed a sad deal more.

Now, just as then, we deny and we pretend.
That we will not be effected in the end.

A country, built on the backs of those called to war...
Cannot handle being told to stay home, they're "bored".

American dreams are being choked.
As ever, all is well for the big business folk.

Woe be my fellow essential personnel.

Not just the Healthcare, not just Police, Fire, EMTs, Dispatch, those the people who see you through your moments of true essential hell.

No no, I mean the "lesser" perceived personnel.

Your hardware store, your grocery staff.
Those who take out your trash.

Your auto parts stores, all these cashiers.
Your fast food restaurants are places full of fear.

Even the processing plant workers are treated like meat.
All of us, trying not to spread disease is scolded as defeat.

We are expected to put our lives at near constant, silent risk.
When a year ago many of us were spoken down at as lesser than piss.

The line between fast food workers and sacrifice
Spelled out with  the words "essential personnel" as the font-thin ice.

Except it's in Your Lungs

Welcome all to my  anxiety, the tightening in your chest.
Must I welcome you who mocked me? Must I?
Now that you have come now to suffer with me?
With anxiety?
Your mockery is not laid to rest, I lives on in my head.
For now who but you comes to me, the young veteran to this anxiety.
"What tea do you drink?"
"What meditations do you do?"
"How do you do this?!"
"I lost my screws!"
Oh hush honey, hush honey, I'll tell you the same things I heard, when I came seeking comfort.
"It's all in your head."
Wait, what?
Oh, right, it's your lungs now, isn't it?
I do not have to welcome you who mocked me.
I do not owe you my guidance, I do not owe you my time.
You have become my cruel amusement, to pass my jaded time.
To see you panic and heave and scream, the way I have in and out of dreams.
I have no sympathy for you  because I've had to grow my own.
"It's all in your head."
Drink to your conspiracies, drink to your mania, drink to your denial until the virus comes to you with his hands like bile.
Mock the invasion I endured in my test.
Mock my quarantine, then run when I cough on you from my chest.
I'm maybe petty, I know at least I'm vile, as there are those I wish this plague upon.
I'm human, I know; my blood has shown me so.
So forgive me for mere fact I can't find a damned gram of sympathy for thee.
You, surrounded in the New York corpses.
You, seeing the states fall ill one, by one, by one until free from it are None.
I stand, in the familiar anxious hell sands...
"It's all in your head."
Except it's in your lungs.