Sickly sizzling warmth
Shivering-to-the-bone bizarre storms
So sick that the crops stop growing
Life, the born-to-be-loved
Life
Stops
Being
And become
Sickly seeking
To seek is the state of sicking
This endless seeking —
There’s a sickness going around
Smallpox, chickenpox, polio.
COVID.
But not just those
Sickness going around
Seekness
Sicken the minds
Sicken the hearts
Sicken humanness
Here is it again
Poverty. Inequality. Inadequate Access to Education.
NGOs. Money.
People speaking.
Voicing.
Shouting.
Seeking —
For solutions
The sickness is yet to be gone.
The serpent rests
And tangles around the nerves
Grasps onto the core of the stem
Swiggles into the root
Slowly releasing poison into the root
The seekness continues
Nourished by the poison
Fed by all the sickness
A doctor comes
Astonished by the weeds in the garden
Awed by the accelerating growth
And prescribes some pesticides to spray daily
“Every morning at 6am, then again at 6 pm”
Though for the rest of the day,
The weeds are watered
Watered by the thorny thoughts
In the garden without roses
One day
A lotus grows from the weeds
From the mud
Standing
Remaining in their purest form
The quiet lotus
Slowly releasing gentle streams of
Stillness
Into the soil
The stillness
yet to heal the sickness
But it blooms
Hope
The hope that sprouts
And can spread
As powerful as the sickness
Still,
There’s a sickness going around
Day and Night