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Phil Cohen Works

  • Autobiography
  • Poetics and Other Arts
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A LOCKDOWN POEM

October 3, 2020 by philco

Crossing the Pandemoticon

It began with a hand

clenched experimentally to ear

not so much a fist

as a makeshift mouthpiece

designed to broadcast  miracles

speaking in tongues:

 

‘habari,kangarooshni,slapit

nego,nego,unulti possum!

craaghi covid ipsit cunnilingo ?

es krampit   todo   kwa heri ‘

 

a polyglot  mother tongue

Nordic vowels, Slavic consonants

Swahili syntax, Latin verse

with just a touch of Lewis Carroll

to stitch into proper nonsense

 

all in the hope  some passers by

might stop and listen,

become alarmed,

and call a  passing drone

to guide  me to a  ’place of safety’

where the only voices heard

were broadcast   in my head.

 

But all they see

is an elderly guy

clutching a smart phone

doing   foreign dumb talk

into his high vis mask

to someone just like them

in Karachi , Prague or San Francisco

 

Once upon a time

before we crossed the pandemoticon

we lived in another   country

where language was affordance enough .

One day ,  tuned to a secret station

on  my very own pirate radio

I  was talking to my imaginary friend

when  suddenly she grabbed a fistful of  vowels

and   cartwheeled down the street

shouting oy , oy   look, no hands….

Filed Under: Mapping the Pandemic, Phil's Blog

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Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

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Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

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Phil’s Blogs

UNEASY LIES THE HEAD : ON LOSING THE ROYAL TOUCH  NOW AND THEN

Note: This is a revised and updated text of an article  originally published in Livingmaps Review  and posted online in 2021. It is due to … [Read More...] about UNEASY LIES THE HEAD : ON LOSING THE ROYAL TOUCH  NOW AND THEN

ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

This text is an introduction to  Waypoints Volume 2 ,  a new collection of occasional writings  from the last five years  to be published  in the … [Read More...] about ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

The Map, the Territory and the Fog of War

This is an edited version of a talk given to the opening session of ‘Cartography on the Front Line’ seminar series, at the British Library on October … [Read More...] about The Map, the Territory and the Fog of War

Recent Posts

UNEASY LIES THE HEAD : ON LOSING THE ROYAL TOUCH  NOW AND THEN

Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

On being left behind : the haunting legacies of London 2012

Cartographies of Violence/Rhetorics of War

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