Omicron

Omicron is the new word game for adults and children. It slowly bubbles up into conversation. Not Omigod, Omicron. Before impressing with a high wordcount, floating through the house in invisible numbers. Hard-won freedoms find new-won perspective. Protests lie forlorn before the anticipated variant. Round in circles we go, meeting our Alpha days again for the first time. Little-o is hard to see. The world doesn’t want to see it at all. Big talkers need to hold their breath for little-o. A mask helps. Legion is [Omicron], even as we speak, a strain spreading like a delta across our conversations.

App

To app, or not to app. There is no perhaps. The technologists on the committee snapped the social solution the committee desired. Science apportions access to those with the app, who can afford it. The [app] is mightier than the pen. Science alone opens the doors to freedom. Others will find an alternative. The committee may now sleep at nights, who slept through the meeting. Their application is perfection, or your money back. This appendix is a living part of you (just avoid pain), an appendage you can’t do without, an approximation to the sum of all applicable knowledge. Apparently.

U

Unvaccinated, unwelcome. Is that true? That’s not true. Why don’t they just do it? Like everyone else. Reasons not to scarcely count when set against public good. Unvacation. A non-word enters the mind. Then, uncertainty. Uncertainty unending. That’s the real experience, the mood, expectation. Whatever’s the word for personal states. Our collective wits see through deceits of leaders, their staged plans. Undoubtedly. Indubitably, even, you could say. Undertakings. On hold, undecided. The mind goes, Undertaker? Unlikely! Still, the future is not a U-Turn. You mean your turn. Or is it? How to [U]? As for understanding. Always it’s available, unfinished.

Scarecrow

 Who do you frighten? What’s that under your fossil cap? Coal for brains? Oceans may drown us before the wind gets an answer. Long straw or short straw, what’s it to be? Stuffed with murmur-weed and doch-weed you’re quite the sight, all right. A currawong could peck out your eye soon as blink. Your pent-up cost-all or nothing gambit, it won’t save the farm. Gale forces swivel your stick-in-the-mud. Yet still, eyeless gazer, you point the wrong way. Smirking [scarecrow], you can’t stop the weather. Do you feel the burn? Your eastern seaboard’s on fire. Get back to us tomorrow.

Roadmap

 Question 1: Can poetry be a roadmap? It depends. Robert Frost talks about how the road less travelled “has made all the difference.” Politicians call this a dangerous detour, even a dead end, because their private attitude is “my way or the highway”, choices that can prove not just unpoetic, but stupid. Dante Alighieri wrote a [roadmap] explaining existence’s dangers and delights. Consider how poetry, all exterior sounds and figures, is regurgitation of your interior journeys. Messy, no colour-coded Googlemap. Sometimes poetry’s just a walk around the block: searching memories, a surprise flower, the guard dog that barks every time.

Ennui

 Boredom is an expectation for many people, factored into their daily lives. Ennui is not counted on in the same way. Maybe that’s the difference between them. Boredom is wanting to be somewhere else at the time. Ennui knows we can only be here now; the self doesn’t like it. Ennui offers no effective way out. Absinthe will only prolong ennui. Or watching daily press conferences. Something is better than nothing? Not with [ennui]. Boredom is an alert to take control, change direction. Ennui knows it needs help, but what? Body, mind, and spirit must wait out this private lockdown.

Peregrine

 Peregrines can do ‘peregrinatio’ at 320 kmph, considerably faster than your average pilgrim. Peregrines are the fastest creatures in the world. Humans can be amongst the slowest. The word implies travelling into foreign parts, over medieval mountains. Even plodding our peregrinationes inside the 10 km radius surrounding our home opens up foreignness. Local looks new, alive, strange even. Home truths indeed. Home life is what we make it: options include inferno, purgatorio, paradiso. The garden path can be a heavenly pilgrimage. We are charmed by our Collins Street peregrines, described on earthquake day as “internet stars… gripping a housebound nation.”

Number

Chasing numbers. On earthquake day we scour for the highest: 6.2 Bass Strait 1946. 5.9 is next so we’re history. The record for protests is 235 arrests. On earthquake day that was down to 66. Doughnut day imminent. NSW’s highest daily case [number]: 1599. Going below 1000 is made to sound an improvement. “Just 935 positive yesterday”. All going well it’s 6 weeks more lockdown. 12 if people don’t do the right thing. Jab numbers rise, but not without a vaccine. We wish these numbers added up. But there’s no 1 roadmap. We cannot count all the roadmaps out there.

Freedom

 Freedom Day is a twinkle in someone’s eye. Give it the benefit of the doubt. Better late than never. What I’m saying here is it’s an interesting expression. Say it often enough and it will enter the language. Freedom Day is just another word for nothing left to lose. It sounds axiomatic. It could become idiomatic, if enough believers join in. Freedom Day twists your arm. It could be the last straw. Then again, it could be the best medicine. [Freedom] Day, but will it last? It could leave you under the weather. You wouldn’t want to be caught dead.   

Bondi

 Your honour, the man on the [Bondi] tram was infected. He was on the Highway to Hell. ‘Is that a Sydney street?’ No your honour, it’s a metaphor. It’s a song by AC/DC. ‘I see. Continue.’ He arrived at the beach with the intention of crashing some crystal cylinders. ‘Is that a legal substance?’ Surf, your honour. He proceeded past the Beach Closed signs to mingle with hundreds of others who also ignored the signs. His mask was down under his chin. He took Instagram images as proof. ‘A case of leading with the chin’. If you will, your honour.

 

Deckchair

 “I have some complain everyday deckchair conferences is too much wasn’t sure how people would react to me not fronting up to deckchair announcements anyhow case numbers any old way whatevs I will turn up when I need to but to expect the leader of the deckchairs indefinitely to do this every day means that I’m not doing my job the people of this state can judge me on my 2000+ [deckchair] record whenever I need to speak directly to the public even when I don’t which is from next Monday I must normalise this the new normal everyday properly”

Stroll

 Not across it, he tries at strolling the photo opportunity, casual with a chancellor, easy with presidents. Autocues assist elocution. Sexual enquiry, refugee intake, words stroll from his mouth like it’s nothing at all. Steamroller the cabinet, baby-stroller the presser’s questions. Climate, it’s no [stroll] in the park. Still, it’s not a race, not a competition, it’s a strollout. A strollcall of intensive care sounds as if he cares at all. He strolls from the podium: look relaxed, glass of water, phone the wife. He tabulates marginals, strolls with truth to question time. Trolls turn into strolls, bloggers into flaneurs.

Preparation

 “I’ll put the road map out so people know exactly what life’ll be like in a week or two because if you hear about something done differently I don’t want you to be concerned the highest number of people in intensive care why we’ll be able to present in very good detail next week all the [preparation] work only if you feel like it that’s been happening to make sure everyone can feel confident if they need those services the best on the planet but we hope it doesn’t get to that the Prime Minister I speak to him regularly.”