It’s Still US AND THEM

Madonna is sprawled
                                      in a milk bath
with
              pressed sugar pink flower petals

Artfully scattered
Around her boom box

Soft filtered light veils her face
And her perfumed ignorance

Intoxicates

She declares “We Are All Equal Now”

Elton has rallied together
                                                some of his showbiz chums

And is organizing a  Co Vid 19 fund raiser
He will have his  moment again
                                                          and again
                                                                                     and again …

Arnie is chomping on a half-lit cigar
from a frothy sex -bubbled hot tub
Lulu, his donkey nibbles carrots in the background
And you can hear the
                                                   G -G – G – orgeous twinkle of laughter

Or is that just the ring a ding ding
of easy dough?

Celebrity shaman are hogging space
on the web to read us
                                              Shakespearean verse

And teach us how  to  wash our hands
And while away the days under 
                                                                                    a COVID -19 haze

A real gobbler is pirouetting
near her Agha in striped knee highs

Baking her own bread

The money gods have been kind

She answers to no one

We have clowns in silk pajamas
                                                                floating

From one palazzo terrace to another

They giggle and charm an invisible forest
of fawning fans

As they ENTERTAIN and self-isolate
In very swish very safe multi-million dollar

                                                                                   real estate   

Their flower filled arses squeezing out
FEEL GOOD manifestoes

just for us

On the other side of the DIVIDE

It’s a different Monday morning

There are beefy security guards patrolling the supermarkets
Milk is rationed and two women catfight over
A pack of baby wipes

People are crammed,
Like canned anchovies
In boxed cages
                                         and listen to the daily death toll

While waiting 3 long hours to buy loo roll

A moment of blindness:

Bars restaurants clubs and coffee shops
All boarded up

Army trucks are loaded with coffins
of COVID – 19 victims

And football sized  car parks have morphed
Into mass burial grounds

A velvet haired child turns his laughter
Into sunbeams

They land on the grey webby face
of an insurance adjuster

Bad intentions in the air
When you can’t  keep 6 feet apart

No rent freeze to ease the pain
No Zen matador to save us from hard rain

A fading grandma lets out a dry bitter laugh

It wheels around the ceiling bulbs

and lands in the folds
of her jazz -tapped plum colored toes

It’s still us and them segregated by

MONEY. HATE. LOVE. FREEDOM

Saira Viola
artwork by  eNdO