Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










Hope-greetings in the times of Covid-19

Hope you’re staying safe
Hope you’re keeping sane
Hope you’re self-isolating
Hope you’re social-distancing
Hope you’re sanitising-and-disinfecting
Hope you’re surgical-face-mask adorning
Hope you’re not-planning-to-fall-sick-from-anything-but-Covid-19
Hope you’re reverse sneezing-and-coughing
Hope you’re namaste-ing hand-waving head-furiously-nodding-and-tossing eyebrow-abruptly-raising body-jerkily-retreating
Hope you’re hoarding stocking stuffing piling overflowing
Hope you’re donating to those who cannot afford to do so
(Why not donate here: https://www.feedingindia.org/; https://fundraisers.giveindia.org/)
Hope you’re waiting-it-out-from-home productively
Hope you’re waiting-it-out-from-home productively with your loved ones
Hope you’re following your what-will-I-achieve-by-following-my-daily-to-do lists
Hope you’re zooming skyping videocalling phonecalling and not just mailing whatsapping messengering smsing
Hope you’re washing cleaning cooking baking feeding soiling planting watering tending hands-feet-face-hair-neck-back messying
Hope you’re home-fitnessing
(You will find some no-equipment exercises here: https://darebee.com/)
Hope you’re impulsively-to-the-left-and-then-to-your-centre swiping
Hope you’re binge-bilge-watching
Hope you’re comfort-and-finding-pleasure-in-comfort reading
Hope you’re alternate-world building
Hope you’re augmented-and-virtual-reality embracing
Hope you’re Mars-gazing
Hope you’re difference-between-numbness-and-indifference comprehending
Hope you’re numbers-estimates-targets-toll unnotching
Hope you’re purposefully delaying
Hope you’re soul-searching
Hope you’re life-before-Covid-19 regressing
Hope you’re un-cluttering
Hope you’re re-and-de-prioritising
Hope you’re un-force-and-retro-fitting
Hope you’re un-rationalising
Hope you’re un-intellectualising
Hope you’re un-ideologising
Hope you’re un-mythologising
Hope you’re universalising
Hope you’re self-realising
Hope you’re I-me-my-self-exterminating
Hope you’re sights-visible-not-just-to-your-mind’s-eye seeing
Hope you’re sounds-outside-your-head hearing
Hope you’re my-role-as-the-ultimate-seeker-and-nature’s-as-the-ultimate-giver reversing
Hope you’re hoping yourself to sleep every night
Hope your hoping is essential medicinal life-sustaining genderless ageless casteless colourless borderless human a nocturnal winged mammal an exotic anteater an extraterrestrial restorer of world order called Covid-19
Hope hoping is your temporary Ikigai
Hope “hope” is your feeling of the year 2020
Hope you’re dreaming of never having to stop hoping
Hope you’re not hoping against hope

 

← Kanishka Gupta