Meltdown #14: Social Races
To inspire and distract us from COVID gloom
The Paralympics are here not a moment too soon
Their triumphs of all kind
Sheer power of the mind
A sobering antidote to our lockdown doom
We are living history in a race of our lives
Cooped up in our caves just trying to survive
Gotta break the spell
Of this highway to hell
Our minds are racing in overdrive
We are overdosed with news in our faces
Today we’re told of ninety new cases
And the New South Wales score
Is a thousand and more
Our only way out will be vaccine races
Home learning’s so hard for parents and kids
Education and social skills on the skids
Get them back to classrooms
The playgrounds and art rooms
Need child vaccination, lower the age lid
But don’t forget who caused this perilous state
The genie jumped the bottle when locked down too late
And Scott didn’t buy
Enough vaccine supply
Or build proper places to isolate
Contrast the Paralympians to our PM’s performance
His ducking and dawdling, denial and discordance
He prevaricates
He obfuscates
He’s shirked every crisis of global importance
Our Paralympians would never settle for last place
Amongst comparable countries in the vaccine space
They’d show positivity
Despite disability
To win gold in the global survival race
But don’t rush to failure - Scott’s oft used instruction
His inertia, inaction and wilful obstruction
When he drops the hose
We are left exposed
We’re in a race to avoid self-destruction
And a rescue race in Afghanistan
Before it’s taken over by the Taliban
The evacuation
Is a panic station
A crisis even worse than the flee from Vietnam
Then terrorism adds injury to insult
A suicide bomber from Islamic State cult
US soldiers, translators
Afghan collaborators
A carnage of bodies, a heinous assault
Meanwhile we awaken from our COVID coma
Relying on vaccines to live with Corona
So will our injections
Suppress mass infections
Or will our ‘freedom’ end up just a misnomer
Aunty Shirley’s safe in her aged care village
New Zealand’s outbreak from Australian spillage
From a COVID free nation
To full incarceration
Another travel bubble is hard to envisage
Every lockdown day’s like a grounded hog
Sitting at your desk like a lazy log
Gotta keep busy
Or your head goes dizzy
Some home all alone, not even a dog
We control what we can to stop over stressing
When will it end, we have given up guessing
Writing verses each week
Sadly a bit bleak
But sometimes sprinkled with positive dressing
Like imagine if this crisis was at an earlier time
Before we had internet and everything online
This better technology
And epidemiology
Won the research race for vaccines ….. to save humankind
Kevin Holmes • 29th August 2021
