To Mask Or Not

To mask, or not to mask, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The venal scowl of fellow supermarket shoppers,
Or to drop arms against a sea of ‘tussis
venturing out, under aegis of rent cloth. To cough—to sneeze,
No more; and by a sneeze to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand sheet roll of 3-ply
That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a sternutation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To cough, to sneeze;
To expectorate, perchance to clear one’s throat —ay, there’s the rub:
For in that nagging hack of Wuhan what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled out of shelter in place,
Out into the armpit of this great nation,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of a sniffle, a frog in one’s windpipe.

For who would bear th’whooping wheeze,
Th’oppressor’s executive orders, the proud man’s farmer’s blow,
The pangs of dispriz’d haircuts, the social distancing
The insolence of coercive enforcement, and the spurns
once good neighbors merit of th’unworthy excursions,
When he himself might his quietus make
With but a bare visage? Who would shopping trolley bear,
To rasp and bark under a palette of Charmin Ultrasoft,
But that the dread of something after covid-19,
The undiscovere’d Costco, from whose isles
No hoarder returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear interminable queues we have
Than break curfew in seek of kinder lines that we know not of?

Thus Corona does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of panic
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of psychosis,
And enterprises of bat-shiat hysterical freaking out,
Stay at Home! (Unless you need to go out),
And forever lost - that best shave money could buy.