610,000 dead in early August as county fair season starts
While we argue over mask mandates in our schools
As we fill restaurants and walk into stores faces uncovered
While we try to squeeze in a few last weeks of fun in the sun
618,000 dead on August 11 while the Delta variant sweeps through
As parents start moving their children into college dorms
Stores advertise sales, trying to get people to buy out the stock
And now we are hearing about the Lambda variant making a surge
School boards vote on mask mandates in community meetings
Which are disrupted by shouts and threats, ‘we know who you are’
People wave around copies of the Constitution, The Bill of Rights,
the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Bible.
624,000 dead on August 18, one thousand more that live in Vermont
Another state has fallen to Covid-19, the Pandemic, the life changer
American lives have been taken, American work may never be the same
But the trauma does not encourage unity and safety, only anger.
A hospital in Brevard County Florida sends out an SOS desperate for help
Calling in refrigerated trucks which can hold up to 30 bodies each
Doctors volunteer to run lab reports back and forth or sit with patients
It still is not enough to help an overwhelmed system or nurses in the end.
2021 is surpassing 2020, the Delta variant is more easily communicable
But 99% of those who are infected were never vaccinated, it wasn’t real
Even now, knowing those who have died, or who have lasting effects of the virus
They refuse to get vaccinated, because it’s a hoax, and they still have questions.
It will be another year of working from home and online learning
Another year of people being unable to pay their rent as the bills pile up
But policies which could help, like loan forgiveness, or continued unemployment
Are pushed to the side, ridiculed, and dismissed, those in power aren’t hurting.
Politicians are entrenched, the Big Lie cannot be countered lest the profit fall
So cultists continue to take the microphone, spouting buzzwords and rhetoric
Plandemic, it’s all about the children, you will be tried for treason, Trump won
I shake my head, how can you be so crazy, how do you not know someone who died?
But they do know someone who died, they just don’t care anymore
It’s not about taking care of each other, of getting through this nightmare together
The madness has set in, the battle lines drawn, and no man’s land is outside the door
The next fight will be over boosters, added to the passport
I don’t want to write these poems anymore, not for another state
They are no longer an outpouring of sadness, a reminder of the dead
Instead, now they are my anger and my disbelief at what has happened
My country has fractured, a cult has taken the minds of my neighbors.
But we cannot deprogram them nor free them from its grasp
Because to deprogram them we must stop the leader’s messages
We must give them truth, hard facts, show them they have been hurt
How can we do that when they have been told they cannot trust truth?
We have lost two states worth of people, but they are small states
Barely populated, only ranchers and hardy folk who love the elements
The next Washington DC, a major metropolis, could fall by Christmas
Would that be enough to shake the people out of the fog I wonder.
Goodbye Vermont, with your college towns and university campuses
No more Vermont cheddar, maple syrup, or Ben and Jerry’s ice cream
If only that were true, if only this were confined by the borders of a state
Would people care then, if they saw how many we’d lost? A state’s worth?
(Meet Mago Contributor) Francesca Tronetti