THE SNOWMAN HAS A CARROT FOR A NOSE BUT NO MASK FOR THE MOUTH
By THE BORED BARD 2020
the covid snowman
melts patiently
for the ICU monitor
to flat line
. . . . ______________________________________________________________________________
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Even the dinsaurier in Villers sur Mer has a mask! It looks funny, but reminds everybody to wear the thing!
waits meltingly? (or squishily, drippingly, oozily etc 
)
I just think ‘melts patiently’ fits a tad awkwardly with for (… the monitor to flat-line…) 
And ICU is perhaps redundant in a koan-like verse where less is usually more. ICU is a ‘given’ because of the monitor and flat-line references.
Just a couple of thoughts from another poet manqué. Love your audacity and care for the art!
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Why don’t you post some of your poetry Peter ?
I’m no poet, and don’t I know it
That’s a very interesting thought about ‘ICU’ Peter - I’m inclined to agree - but I don’t think I agree about ‘melts patiently / for’ - surely inside this phrase is the common usage ‘waits patiently for’ - our jarred expectation of the commonplace bringing out the hidden pun in ‘patient’, and sparking all kinds of thoughts about how passive we are: seduced by a carrot, or led by the nose, perhaps?
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Yes there was a pun in patient. On one level its just about a patient on a hospital bed waiting patiently to die. He is melting away…
I wanted to demonstrate how life can melt away quite quickly when covid takes hold. I also like to make comparisons between technology (ICU) set against nature. The technology can only watch and monitor while the virus(nature) takes hold. It’s fascinating how different people have different interpretations. The dot dot dot and flat line at the end of the poem using full stops and dashes allows the ICU to have the last say…
The way I see it
The way you see it
The way it is…
Is what make poetry so compelling. Thanks for your feed back.
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I couldn’t help thinking of the ‘soldier in white’ in Catch-22 - a patient entirely covered in bandages - horrific in itself, but the novel ultimately reveals a more terrible secret: there is actually nothing left inside the bandages - we are all outside.
A conveyor belt of unknown wounded soldiers. The patient is treated as a non person. A very compelling story. Disturbing.
Tony
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