3 POEMS ON THE HUMAN TOUCH

“The thing that brings human value back to experience, is the touching of it with human presence.”  - Steve Gilligan.  Here are three poems to inspire our bringing human value back to experience through touch with human presence.

TOUCH - by Anne Dykers

How do you carry a dream
in a broken world in a broken
body in a broken bone
it grows the dream
in the cracked shaft we carry
light like liquid as tender
as milk

The world was never
perfect the world was ever split
down her belly
God's laugh cracked her
up and out poured the light
milk dream
of a perfect world that is
touch and that is
the white stuff of bone that
hardens, cracks, and
pours light again

Just Look

WHY ONE BECOMES A MASSAGE THERAPIST - by Dale Favier

You take me down long roads dusty with grief
and show me: "Just there. The water used to fill a little pool
and spill over: you could cup your hands beneath."

I cup my hands beneath. Your shoulders rise
with hesitation now, born of pain so automatic
that no joint moves without a grimace. Still

I pull the whole arm up straight and reach behind
for a spot that's hidden by the scapula else,
I let my fingers settle into the flesh, like

the bare feet of a happy four-year-old
in wet beach sand. I ponder the empty feel
of the house: I ponder the echo and the silence.

I heard the beginning of your apology
for not being cheerful. Forget it. The gift
of good cheer is cheap: use it once

and throw it away. The gift of plain suffering
is a gift that will guide me in the parched hills
when all else proves worthless. This

is the gift I came for: this is what my hands drink in
when I cup them under the little stream of light.

ODE TO MY HANDS - by Tim Seibles

Five-legged pocket spiders, knuckled
starfish, grabbers of forks, why
do I forget that you love me:
your willingness to button my shirts,
tie my shoes—even scratch my head!
which throbs like a traffic jam, each thought
leaning on its horn. I see you

waiting anyplace always
at the ends of my arms—for the doctor,
for the movie to begin, for
freedom—so silent, such
patience! testing the world
with your bold myopia: faithful,
ready to reach out at my
softest suggestion, to fly up
like two birds when I speak, two
brown thrashers brandishing verbs
like twigs in your beaks, lifting
my speech the way pepper springs
the tongue from slumber. O!

If only they knew the unrestrained
innocence of your intentions,
each finger a cappella, singing
a song that rings like rain
before it falls—that never falls!
Such harmony: the bass thumb, the
pinkie's soprano, the three tenors
in between: kind quintet x 2
rowing my heart like a little boat
upon whose wooden seat I sit
strummed by Sorrow. Or maybe

I misread you completely
and you are dreaming a tangerine, one
particular hot tamale, a fabulous
banana! to peel suggestively,
like thigh-high stockings: grinning
as only hands can grin
down the legs—caramel, cocoa,
black-bean black, vanilla—such lubricious
dimensions, such public secrets!
Women sailing the streets
with God's breath at their backs.
Think of it! No! Yes:
let my brain sweat, make my
veins whimper: without you, my five-hearted
fiends, my five-headed hydras, what
of my mischievous history? The possibilities
suddenly impossible—feelings
not felt, rememberings un-
remembered—all the touches
untouched: the gallant strain

of a pilfered ant, tiny muscles
flexed with fight, the gritty
sidewalk slapped after a slip, the pulled
weed, the plucked flower—a buttercup!
held beneath Dawn's chin—the purest kiss,
the caught grasshopper's kick, honey,
chalk, charcoal, the solos teased
from guitar. Once, I played
viola for a year and never stopped

to thank you—my two angry sisters,
my two hungry men—but you knew
I just wanted to know
what the strings would say
concerning my soul, my whelming
solipsism: this perpetual solstice
where one + one = everything
and two hands teach a dawdler
the palpable alchemy
of an unreasonable world.

Collage (segment) by Julie Lauterstein