The New Abnormal

After the plague, we hoped things would return to normal

Before pestilence rolled in, they had at least seemed that way

Counting our dead, we were desolate but secretly smug, for the human animal

Does congratulate itself for facing the horrors of night and greeting bright day

Even as the flags descend to half-mast and the eulogies are solemnly intoned

For a moment, in the somber and saturnine song, notes that promise to become laughter

Give a fresh luster to morbid scenes; on the sepulcher’s stones, the edge of hope is honed

However, the new normal has, to date, seemed not to live up to the name; rather,

It smells disingenuous, even contrived; something is fishy--have we been owned?

Just the same, we go through the motions, of course—but some sense that these villages seem Potemkin

Knowing the steps and the tune is easy and natural, but the dance looks wrong somehow, ersatz

Looking at one another with suspicion or incredulity, ill-fitting and peculiar seems our skin

Making breakfast, scrolling or strolling or trolling, we struggle to connect familiar dots

Never wishing to be ingrates or mad or callous, of course, we look to the horizon

O for a sun as warm and handsome as he was before his gold complexion was masked

Plenty of fresh crises are revealed when he does rise: terror, intelligent machines and smugly stupid animals; poison

Quenches with cruel cunning, smirking at every antidote; alive, by fresh foes are we tasked

Rushing out of isolation, we lunge into the quagmire, as war is on

Seriously, folks, is any cliché older than atavistic, retributive justice-- hasn’t Hammurabi been decoded by now?

Today, inflation; tomorrow, starvation; before we know it, demagoguery and fresh fascism roar

Unsteady, the twenty-first century is old enough to vote, but charges of fraud and lunatic insurrections make a row

Visigoths are no longer content to breach the gates--they want their own reality show, high office, more

What kind of macabre mayhem have we pulled the red death’s mask off to reveal?

Xenacious, we hunger for change instead of normalcy—ChatGPT can play, but what’s the score?

Yearning is ubiquitous but for what, exactly? What was is gone, what is repels; what is our deal?

Zones of quaint, quotidian quiet can be found but their stillness grows eerie; this fresh maiden seems a whore