Meltdown #9: Social Apology
Our lockdown continues until next Tuesday
But will it extend to yet a new day
Still in New South Wales
Delta freely exhales
While it’s Freedom Day for our friends in UK
But British cases are as high our daily tests
Our busy test and tracing teams are doing their best
To get ahead of the curve
Can we hold our nerve
While we get ourselves out of this unvaccinated mess
Delta’s out of control, the government’s out of denials
If excuses were doses, we’d have plenty of vials
Disaster relief
Doesn’t fix the grief
We ride the tide of impatience and Scott you’re on trial
Half the nation has lost its sense of humour
How many months more, hunched under the doona
Scott takes responsibility
A half mouthed apology
For why the vaccine wasn’t rolled out sooner
So Delta’s moved in, too close to home
From Hawthorn to Kew and places I roam
She breaks every rule
She’s creepy and cruel
Takes over the neighbourhood, as if it’s her own
Tier One contacts in solitary confinement
Tainted families holed up in home consignment
Some friends of mine
Wrong place wrong time
With higher risk at sports games in a crowded entwinement
It all started when a Fed Ex flight came through
Their unvaccinated driver, the outbreak then grew
It rapidly reached
Beyond Bondi Beach
Then down to Victoria came the furniture crew
The river Delta’s eroded a long winding valley
To the shores of Phillip Island from up in the Mallee
A torrent of tributaries
Widening distributaries
Of alluvial virus on a rampaging rally
Their Premier’s been spotted not wearing a mask
Is a walk with new boyfriend an exempt task
Hiding under her hood
Not doing as she should
Is obeying her own rules too much to ask?
We’re hearing about even more government rorts
Spending taxpayers’ money to buy voter support
In Liberal marginal seats
Set out in spreadsheets
Their integrity’s drowning in a barrel of pork
Coming soon, new cross-border charges on trade
An overseas penalty on the carbon we’ve made
A tax on recalcitrance
For climate intransigence
On exports of carbon, a tariff will be paid
Brisbane’s won next decade’s Olympic Games
Bringing brief respite from our COVID pain
But where is the finishing line
What sort of world by that time
Olympic rings forged from today’s COVID chains
We face a pandemic of vaccine hesitancy
A preference for Pfizer is most people’s tendency
Yet our anxiety eases
For non-COVID diseases
Other vaccines are taken with trust and expediency
A generational crisis, so there is no scripture
But where is the vision, can we paint a picture
Like what is the rate
We need to vaccinate
We need hope and dreams …. that our future will be richer
Kevin Holmes • 23rd July 2021
