They Crowned a virus
They crowned a virus emperor,
draped it in scarlet fear,
and declared the breath of man a felony,
a treason whispered through the wind.
They criminalized the very air we shared,
turning lungs into contraband,
muzzles of cloth the new iron law
suffocating souls beneath synthetic veils,
while eyes above the mask grew hollow,
accusing every stranger of invisible crime.
Privacy became a relic,
shattered by the gaze of apps and drones,
contact traced like chains across the skin,
every step logged in the ledger of suspicion,
every cough a confession extracted by decree.
Draconian edicts fell like winter hail:
stay walled in solitude, six feet from warmth,
love at arm's length, embrace forbidden fruit no more
they wove loneliness into policy,
a slow poison of isolation,
where hearts withered in the silence of locked doors.
Subtle socialism slipped through the cracks,
state hands cradling cradle to grave,
promising safety in exchange for surrender,
while China's shadow loomed relevant again,
a model of control polished to gleam.
The media, that ancient oracle of ink and screen,
became the high priest of manipulation,
chanting numbers forged in secret laboratories,
opium of quick fixes peddled as salvation
uncertain elixirs thrust into arms,
promises of immunity laced with doubt.
They buried the immune system in scorn,
ignored the old fevers cancer's quiet rage,
malaria's fevered dreams, typhoid's cruel grip
deodorized death's other faces,
while every hospital corridor echoed one name alone,
every ailment recast in corona's monochrome.
Asymptomatic became the new heresy,
demonized in every citizen,
a specter haunting the healthy,
turning neighbors into potential executioners.
They robbed with ritual tests,
thermometers waved like wands of judgment,
while true plagues went unnamed,
numbers manufactured, inflated, suspended in air
like smoke from a pyre of other diseases.
Sex itself was halted in pretense,
six feet a sacred chasm no passion could bridge,
yet bodies still collided in secret rebellion.
From February to February the wheel turned barbaric,
fear perpetual, a leash held by screens,
media the shepherd of trembling flocks.
This was the agenda unveiled in plain sight:
not healing, but harness
a world remade in chains of caution,
where liberty coughed once too loud
and was sentenced to eternal quarantine.
Yet in the masked hush, a quiet defiance stirs
the unbowed breath, the ungagged heart,
remembering freedom's wild, uncontained song.
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