Touched

Freeform, free verse, on the spot poem...

Touched

 

His face looks as if suspended in his own hell's secret shame,

his gives it reasons, even motivations--to not allow feelings in,

he always has the bite of vicious remarks in the corner of his thoughts,

first impressions of what is ugly (only by his opinions' pinioning claws)

He laughs at others misery, a practical joke

never becomes or began as such - more damage done than prevented...

 

Yet days are only missing when he is lost in races

horses, gambling, handicapping (like pyramids of numbers, meaningless)

He does not forget important days though--he garantees

having written them on a small list (like a slip of a recipe)

it is tattered, fringes begin to crumble,

and these days are digitized world webbed and twittered,

perhaps we all need our binky, security, blankets

how worries do not ever touch his focus

 

But his face is touched with the strain of keeping it

together? Proud. Self-annilation appears to be pinkish-red, blotchy,

and accompanied by doubt-filled laughter,

as though he is waiting for more laughter to join in...

 

He is full of secrets, no one can deny that...

If only he were in touch with the weight of it

how secrets run in darkened schemes, a maze that is

chaos at its evolving

How does one know oneself in that

which creates shadows with one's own touching

reasons to be within life's crushing waves

 

He remembers his son's birthday is tomorrow,

he gives him everything his son asks for,

this is how he touches a life

more important than his own, heavy with displacing his shame

 

A father will always be a father

even when not in view, but to nuture a touch

a meaning behind relationships that must have its moment

its attention completely full,

a touch becomes meaningless

like sex without love...

 

He questions the people that have come by him,

angry to be touched

and agonizing to know if he is loved?

Mathmetician in a language of boxes, accumulating,

monetary rosaries, cuts in our future's trust...

What language can be understood

if he can not relate the words when he is deeply

touched??