COVID Companions is a series of creative pieces featuring snippets of life during COVID-19, with a special focus on the other individuals or creatures who are keeping us company during quarantine, lockdown, ‘circuit breaker’, or whatever your equivalent might be.

Clusterf**k

you moan, you cannot take it any longer:
my nights are long and they just got longer.

of the times i lost count counting, i lose count:
my nights that are long are getting longer.

what world beyond us rains down in numbers!
while our nights are long, they will get longer.

so much of nothing for all that is brewing
for the long nights that are growing longer.

now i know why the caged hamster works out
for the days are long and getting longer.

on the streets and in the parks – runaways!
how these days, though long, can still get longer.

someone freed a bench from unemployment:
my days may be long, they are now longer.

in the land of the masked, the full face is queen:
my days, long as they are, got yet longer.

nothing is secret that shan’t be revealed:
the long days dare not but still got longer!

some kind of trouble – i hear the walls wail
in these long nights that are wailing longer.

who is clapping in the dead of darkness?
my nights are long and you make them longer.

zombies in aimless cars: the witching hour
between the long half and the half longer.

will you and i remember how we loved once?
those nights we knew are no longer longer.

smiles forgotten, the eyes’ sudden brightness
and longing in the night waxing longer.

all hours the tv howls in my face
since my nights are long, reliving longer.

when will the end come? how will it be like?
life is short – yet its nights so much longer.

Gwee Li Sui is a poet, a graphic artist, and a literary critic. Learn about his work at www.poetry.sg/gwee-li-sui-bio