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tactile poem
It is only touch—it is only through touch,
that I find myself
wanting:
pianist hand between my knees,
fingers long enough to
crush love from down the road and even
those caresses I savored; massage chair
beating the back of my heartbeat to submission;
only imagining your palm a sail in the
wind of my jaw do I find my skin
opening like a door, pores faceted,
crystalline when touching the other we
drink until oceans empty, exchanging basins.
But the fingertips, your stubbled cheek,
they still thirst. My aching hand
stretches across the table
of its own accord.
Even my blood is parched,
gravitates toward your nearness
as though trying to drink storm-winds,
laden with water but achingly empty.
Electricity lying with the mountains,
with the heavy clouds,
rushing over my head and all of me shivers
at the mere thought of thunder,
having only dry winds about me
when it hits.
When moving, towards high closet shelves
fingers reaching for the last grocery bag,
wrestling a child into her coat—
each stretch is a gateway,
one side gaping open while the other
falls into itself. How to balance it?
Muscles must move like lovers,
a ribcage apart but with give and take,
though too much is always taken,
so that the skin lies above like a window
and everything peers out in
snap-straight shaking fear:
at the storm that shakes the glass
at the emptiness that whips around
this clapboard house, colder
than west wind.
(all work (c) treesa, under all psuedonyms and pen names, 2008)
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