COLLECTING BREATH & ITS ABSENCE

All Will Be Well

This Would Be A Swell vacation If Not For The Situation Of Being Quarantined

Can‘t Read.
Can‘t Write.
Anxiety has throttled my concentration and knotted my stomach.

This would be a swell vacation if not for the isolation of being quarantined.

My partner of nearly twenty years has a rare chronic immune disorder.
He will die if he contracts the virus.
I left my job so as not to bring it home to him.
I haven‘t left the house in nearly three months.
I am beginning to forget what “outside” looks and feels like.
If not for the internet, we would have gone very hungry because neither one of us drives.

This would be a swell vacation if not for the alienation of being quarantined.

I cannot hug my parents.
Can‘t visit with friends.
What will my life look like if this thing ever goes away and people stop dying?
We have inadequate leadership.
We have little knowledge we can trust and my neighbors just threw a huge pool party
with no masks, no social distancing
  and ten people in the water, coughing.

This would have been a swell vacation if not for the indignation of being quarantined.

BREATHE

Picture: Dean Pasch (Germany)

Music: Ben Fisher & Paul Olsen (England & USA)

Poem: Kevin M. Hibshman (USA)

Film: Paul Broderick (USA)

Ben’s and Paul’s lyrics for their song:

All Will Be Well

Had I known I’ll never see you again, I’d have said I love you one last time
And held you in my arms again, and sung for you a lullaby

Let’s pretend you are sleeping, dreaming of much better times
As another night falls in our old place, where it’s always light again too soon

And if I help you dream again, all will be well

And I have grown weary, will all my trials be over soon?
So that I might feel alive again, when it’s all I want for you

And if I help you breathe again, all will be well
And if I help you dream again, all will be well

All will be well