POETRY MONTH #5 — KAREN SHOWS UP

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How families get together these days...
There are no Karens in this picture

Everything is a slog these days. Poems make no sense. Oh, they start from something. Today I got an email that referenced shoelaces in a way that made me have to put one in a poem. To mark the day.

Poetry month. Today's nudge involved getting twenty-one different things into a poem. I started playing with that and then it got too hard and dammit, I don't need hard right now, nobody does! So I just kept writing; heating dinner, during Sherlock, propped up in bed and this is it.

There's this meme-person who shows up all the time on FaceBook these days. This is for and about her. I've been messing with this thing all night and I'm not entirely sure what it's about yet but it's nearly midnight so it's going live!

Karen’s Shoelace

Karen’s shoelace winds itself round memory,

a noose on the pox of history,

shoe thing, she says.

Karen's flavour of the month,

the latest to catch on,  

she stares down logic as it hurtles past,

wraps her tongue around truth,

tastes its bitter magic, 

spits it out, swings hand-over-hand

on the powerlines that criss-cross the river 

to deliver the queen’s speech, 

a balm to the confused 

whose multitudes grow 

with each announcement 

of Covid’s latest moves 

and aren’t they something.

You who will carry the story, 

you who will bear the sorrows, 

you who are blinded in the moment,

who can’t believe the world 

is coming to an end for humankind, 

who listens to old music 

on new delivery systems, 

you, and you, and you, 

are you listening? 

What do the brave do, Karen— 

lead us out of the storm, 

but George Strombolopoulos 

is doing Tom Waits's Hold On, 

your new favourite song, 

and your shoelace threatens 

to consume the shoe.

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