Bulletin Poem by Frank Bana

Good evening lockdown
Here's your news reader
Scotland is quiet tonight
Welsh streets are empty
Cape Verde still on the rocks
Botswana is debt-free
Sirens wail ghostly
Across New York City

China's been lying
DC has gone crazy
Germans in relapse
Spain's in recovery
Slum deaths in Lagos
And joy in New Zealand
Parties in Portugal
There must be a reason

Airlines are grounded
Bond markets are crashing
Conspiracies walk the earth
Truth's out of fashion
At the base of the pyramid
Kids hungered and crying
Cloistered in single rooms
The old folks are dying

It is lately reported
That Ireland is tearful
Scotland's the brave one
This green land is fearful
Try our tasty deliveries
Fit for the Last Supper
If the curve's on a downslope
Go out on an upper

Now the Future is hazy
As a warm summer morning
The Past a lost country
And the Present is boring
The silence looms louder
Freedom? unrealistic
Human evolution
Just a freakish statistic

Have you heard of the struggle
Between good and evil
The reach of the greedy
In the heart of the people
These airways are desolate
Who comes to claim them
Whose censors will rewrite
Your very next bulletin