Touch

There is a hunger that recognizes no shame
An ache that only a touch can satisfy
Muscle memory engineers a fond homecoming
Togetherness can salve the great longing
Bonds throughout time leave one sated

Relieving distancing by invoking storytelling
Of narratives of separation and rediscovery
While innocents lie sleeping in nearby chambers
Imposters are left tracing the contours of responsibility
Anxieties their close companions in the nightly search

Mami Wata's siren call is African electronics
The temptation to escape into twilight frolics
Writing books of laughter and forgetting
Embracing the rapture, wide awake yet still dreaming
Curvilinear investigations and material science
The fluid dynamics of conversational lines
Performance untethered from the desire for applause
Sensation the remedy for previous and impending loss

Tied together in close consonance
The end of the affair rests in the balance
The arguments forgotten in the brief encounter
Listen to the sounds: the self-isolating heart murmurs
This. This, right here, is where you belong
Momentarily you forget your mother tongue
The solitude of a stifled scream is about all you can manage
Touch is a conversation in another language

Touch, A Playlist

As always a soundtrack to this note. Obsessions are many. (Youtube, Spotify)

• Touch You by Al B. Sure
• Seconds of Pleasure by Van Hunt
• The Screams of Passion by The Family
• Dreaming Wide Awake by Lizz Wright
• Caught up In The Rapture by Anita Baker
• Dreamin' About you by Prince

This was the first poem-like thing that was gifted to me at the onset of this covidious interlude (Friday March 20 per my notes). It felt entirely too raw to publish and a departure from my usual practice. I have since gone on a tear in other directions with my gestures towards poetics, enough that any misgivings are assuaged by the distance of time.

The muse wills what she wants, I dare not question her.

File under: poetry, touch, emotion, life, culture, observation, perception, sensory, lyricism, toli