BY STEPHEN FAULKNER
At first it was invisible, no amount of cajoling and nagging could convince anyone that this gaseous menace existed. We had been fooled before, we won’t be fooled again, like with that whole Jesus and God skit. Yet constantly, graphs were shown on TV and constantly death came, the count an obsession, a constantly climbing number, the constant knocking of reality came, and we halted.
We watching the inside of our doors for leaks. For hours, for days and for weeks. Till a whole year rolled off the sheet. With no sign of cure, no sign of a counter attack. No bomb would quash, so we were left with what we were taught was cowardice, were were told to hide and to cower behind the door, to push our head firmly into the sand, to wish it all away. Meanwhile science toiled, in laboratories and labs, in factories and sheds, ten billion dollars to the first to find the cure! So of course, money finds ways of mixing chemicals, the impossible appears with the right amount of zeroes on a check. Creeping from below, the first golden tickets were held aloft, the first tickets to Wonkerville! Is this real foil? Seems a mighty strong coincidence to all find the golden ticket at the same time.. but anyway.. Desperation hides the small print. So the cowering hoards had some hope, rejoicing at the news. “A jab you say?! Yes! in my arm, right away!” Side effects, minimal testing.. “In my arm! Right away!” Well OK.. But keep behind your door, keep your mask on, keep your distance. “Wait, What?” Well, there is no one hundred percent, no Pearly white, no Mr Clean. The invisible menace cackles, it witnesses the politics of the balm of nothing, it bides it’s time, it wrings its hands, With a menacing grin, it waits for the gates to reopen, where the fun will return and re-begin. Where an onslaught will fall, a tidal crash, reality to smash into our false emboldenment, to dissolve these silly little sugar pills and wash us out to sea.
Give it another year, another decade, perhaps a reality will emerge that we can grasp, where the small print tallies with the large. A truth may occur. Yet they say the common cold is cureless, an ever-morphing-menace, ever present throughout our history. Perhaps the cold has finally discovered it’s golden ticket to Wonkerville. I wonder what next for the conquering cold, we never made it to the neighbours, never managed that interplanetary conquest we dreamed of, the menace shot it’s bolt too soon, Musk was so close haha, his interstellar phallus needs a better pill. Too late, or too soon, whichever side you might sit, for of course, there are the crooked fatalistic fools pulling for the cold. So please look at all the colourful flowers blooming, listen to the nesting birds singing, smell the new spring pouring out, for who knows how many more springs we might have.
