Two Year 12 students both wrote poems inspired by Amanda Gorman’s poem at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Birth of an Anti-Vaxxer – Theo

 

So lonely, like the eldest in the room,

We wait, so quiet, the envelope will drop.

And then we know we’ll have to use the zoom,

Just because it’s known we have to make it stop.

We cannot drive. We’ll have to get a ride.

But from who? Our kids? We’ve been told to shield.

And as for them. They’re scared to death and hide

From even exercising in a field.

 

Jabs! Jabs! Quick boys! An ecstasy of treating,

Getting the vaccine signed off just in time.

I’m so nervous my mind is taking a beating,

I cannot help but think that it’s a crime.

Dim through the lens of social media light,

I’m scared the ‘cure’ will shortly start the killing.

 

In many dreams, I cannot put it right,

The vaccine’s at me, threatening, choking, killing.

 

If in some worrying dream you too could see

The pressure on the regulators staff.

The frowns, the creases round each worried eye

It is too soon. Sounds the devil’s haunting laugh.

If you could hear in Norway towns, the air

Expiring from the old jab corrupted lungs.

Obscene as friendless, bitter as the wear

On vile, incurable sores on those twitter tongues.

My friend you would not tell with such high zest

To people ardent for a vaccination’s glory,

The old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

 

My Occasional Poem – Anonymous

 

The past year, a year like no other,

No one left unscathed.

It started as a storm in the distance, a vague rumble on the horizon

Never did we think it would reach our shores.

The first wave caught us off guard, swept off our feet in a torrent of statistics and “stay at home” orders

We staggered in the swell, attempting to get our bearings,

but yet again drowned by the surge of the storm.

Alarm bells rang and the toll of death loudened,

increasing in impact and frequency.

Currents pulled us further out to sea, further from the safety of the shore no longer in sight.

We tried to gain control and keep ourselves afloat but the curves of the waves, which just wouldn’t flatten, slowly submerged our conviction.

The mighty ship NHS Britannia never stopped dragging drowning bodies from the swell, yet as time went on we watched as the boat sank lower and lower into the water.

Crack. Crash.

No other sound could be heard.

This was no symphony but a cacophony of terror.

 

Cases slowly began to lull, but we found ourselves sucked into a current of a false sense of security, desperately wishing that this was the reprieve we’d all been hoping for.

 

Alas, it was too good to be true.

Cold winds blew in.

Figures in medical uniforms caught sleep whilst they could, in anticipation of the Winter yet to come.

And it became not just a Winter of discontent,

but a Winter of greater brutality,

as the silent, invisible enemy drowned us in ever larger numbers.

Yet the fortitude of our people never wavered,

desperately clinging to the knowledge that this torment could not last forever.

 

Suddenly, a flicker of hope glimmered in the distance.

The flicker began to grow and grow until it lit the horizon ablaze in a beacon of hope.

This was it.

Science had pulled through, and the promise of nation-wide vaccinations cast us the lifeline we desperately needed.

 

And so now we hold on to that hope, pulling us out of this hellish storm. We will get out of this. We just have to have faith.