Lloyd Rees

Swansea, UK

I have four poetry collections and three novels published plus many short stories and poems in various magazines, including Poetry Wales, New Welsh review etc. 

Poem written 22th May 2020

Journal of the New Plague Year

Stir crazy? No, I quite like stir:

the need to stride and stroll and be all social

scribbled out in red like poor homework

by science and its graphs and certainties.

I disinfect with pleasure the cupboard tins

then rearrange them in phalanxes.                             

(I’m tuned into military metaphor

like a teenager to all that’s dope)

I soap and scrub my age-stained hands,

I measure the distance between me

and all that used to be

using metric, as I’m told to do.

I zoom and team as if I were

an ad man or an entrepreneur.

I sit in my soft settee aisle

and listen to the lectern man

as if I were a true believer.

I am good. I have nothing

to confess.

But I’m no Defoe, no Gabriel Marquez,

I’m just scribbling, in black.

It’s not even homework

(though I’m not in school perforce)

I’m in lockdown, confined to barracks,

a recalcitrant squaddie;

shoved in solitary,

some testy recidivist felon.

I am bad.

I confess.