This poem is unprecedented.
It is not locked down, locked up, locked in or locked out.
It does not follow nor is sagely advised by
Literary and poetic modelling,
Is rhythmically irregular and generally beyond rhyme and reason.
Thus it practices social distancing
Within the confines of the barrel of poetry’s canon.
There are seventeen left aligned lines between
The first and the last lines with no front lines or any underlining
Of words acting as key workers in any given line.
The words are neither self-isolated nor cascade from cliff edges,
Tumbling without track or trace into oblivion.
The poem has no PPE, no herd immunity,
Can be criticised with impunity
By all the community.
The poem’s writer is a coughing spluttering compulsive hand-washer
Who has a tendency to feverish hallucinations and
Whose comments and actions are totally devoid of taste.
What, I ask, could be clearer than that?