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Locked down but not out in Italy

Singing from the balconies! One nice thing about this crisis ... solidarity! “Guess you’re not living like a tourist anymore,” was the funny, truthful and somewhat gut-wrenching message of a friend the day the lockdown in Italy began. Today is day 6. My beloved Italia has been hit hard with the COVID19 epidemic. With the second largest elderly population in the world, the epidemic has meant a disproportionate amount of deaths in the country. So though I haven’t been worried about contracting it myself, this isn’t about me or someone like me who, if contracted it would probably have a sucky couple of weeks and then recover. It is about if someone like me contracted it and then spread it to a person with a complicated health history or an elderly person with a weakened immune system. Eerily orderly: Lines for the grocery store, each person one meter apart In a country with no concept (and no physical room really) for personal space, and in a city with reproachable hygie

Ode to the Adams Morgan Drunkard

On an early December morning,
3:00 am shown on the clock,
I awoke to a drunkard screaming,
his voice much louder than a knock.

A Thursday night in December?
No more than 20 degrees?
What are still those people thinking?
"Oh, it's just a coldish breeze."

I wonder what the occasion?
I wonder the stir?
Is it perhaps an engagement party?
or just a messy blur.

Still, joyously rejoicing
Outside on a winter night,
It can't be a sober person,
that doesn't seem quite right.

I ask the merry revelers,
to perhaps bring it inside,
your hoots and hollers bottled,
in the place where you abide.

I understand the compulsion,
Myself, I have even woo hoo-ed,
But 3:00 am in December,
Sleeping is my only to-do.

In conclusion: All you drunkards, those blurry brown things are buildings with people living in them, please be respectful. Thank you.

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