the virus is making its magic tonight

the virus is making its magic tonight...

the virus is making its magic tonight

huddled in this strained embrace

we try to love each other against all odds

resisting metaphors to war

attacking fear with love

rather than anger - not anger

entire patterns of kaleidoscopic organisms

composed by two strands of RNA

fifteen types of viral proteins

from the last host cell infected

entering immune system cells

building viral copies

each molecule playing

harmonic roles in this process

from the first steps of attachment

to the final process of budding

we have found a way to bloom

in these final diagnoses

the pain we feel is neither

sweet nor sour but both

the pain is lasting

and we find ways to endure

to create nostalgia for so many futures lost

there are no soldiers here

no weapons

just a body and its own private virus

un-camouflaged distinct

in some everlasting clutch

grabbed from a world

filled with worrisome warriors

wanting so desperately to name it out of timeworn kinship

into realms of scapegoating

and histrionic imperialism

begun as a massive strategy for the destruction of an identity

the dubious normalization of queer

that had been so hard won we cried in streets

rosy triangulations vigilant on thoroughfares

only to be harshly chaperoned by false scientific jargon - chat

herded along grid-like routes to the ridiculously sublime missteps of time

the absence of the truth

of tenderness and touch

and now we have it here

in a plethora of bodies

abundance with but one choice to love it and ourselves in and out of loss

to toss our sense of me and I in the end

without regretting middles and beginnings

yes, we huddle in this strained embrace

composing entire brilliant patterns of kaleidoscopic chaos

disseminating ordered mayhem we may one day conquer

free to make this choice on loving death

and the abject fear of isolating ourselves from our detractors

bending viral loads into symbolic signs swaddled and beheld - for bodies to enfold

yes, huddled herds - virions of valiant sympathy and hard won grace…