TACTILE
By Frank Daub
Tactilis – the Ancients said.
“Capable of being touched” –
There is a heaviness in this word,
That awakens the soul – too much.
Of lost proximity, hand
Touching – hand?
Or
Love
reaching the empty space
Of an unresponsive land.
You have passed on, distant and silent, o departed soul,
you are no longer here; life has left you whole.
You have been laid to rest in the cold, unyielding ground,
and where your voice once answered, no echo can be found.
Oh, O re tlogetse o hlokofetše—
You have left us, erased, wiped away,
breathing no more, cold as if fast asleep today.
This letter carries no spirit,le hloka moya,
it reaches for a shadow that was once my moya.
O, how the heart has turned into stone Pelo ye thata
severed feelings, emotionally detached, left all alone.
To feel nothing, go hloka go kwa, in this silent place,
unresponsive to the tears that fall across my face.
Go senyegile—all is broken, ruined, and still,
motionless paper resting on a frozen windowsill.
Whose time has run out, go felilego sebaka,
a page deprived of joy, drifting into the dark.
Oh, but I write to you ka nnete, in complete, unvarnished truth,
remembering the living one, yo a phelago, from the days of our youth,
when feelings responded, warm, empathetic, and bright,
filled with delightful joy, radiating pleasing light.
Zenith of Summer
Cooking in the kitchen
Stirring continuously
Sweating profusely
Terribly tired
Feeling famished
Waiting to eat
Standing
Sudden stillness
Senses tingling
Shadows shrouding
Sitting down
Slow tumble into blackness
Creeping void
Open eyes
Unseeing
Unresponsive
A prolonged moment
of Stygian gloom
Dark abyss
pulling me down
Someone calling my name
Gradual awakening
Fighting fear
Finding the light
Eyes open
Recovery unfolds
Velvet veil removed
With his violin placed there
Note you, shouldered
Both soft and intense, as close
As palpable
That, there held stable
What is for my own features
As expressive.
Artist in travail! Trying
To pluck out a sweet tune in
Wood; unresponsive.
Cry for Help
Winnowing time for recollection
In life’s moments of satisfaction
Without artificial stimulation
Or the blunder of the situation.
Stuck in an era unresponsive
In the guttural dungeons of despair,
Begrudging a knee-jerk reaction,
Mechanical friends become repulsive.
The beleaguered mind crazes
For a one-directional mission
Of taking life to the limits
To achieve perverse relevance.
A call is put out (an S.O.S.),
Like a message on the Internet,
“Light is flickering: Save me!”
And by chance, someone will notice.
Love sits in the witness box,
ragged sleeves pulled over its fragile knuckles,
Yes, its voice a mere murmur in the courthouse.
Prosecutor: And what about the sallow allure
of verses written on discolored parchment?
Must we become venerable troubadours
to mourn love’s uncertainties?
Love: Definitely not! We tweet sonnets on Twitter~
text them to unresponsive ghosts who leave them on read.
The heart wails raw, untuned, bleeding through pixels.
What difference does parchment really make?
Far blown, furthest
As off your day
Tall-grassed do lie.
What drifts o'er as urgent matter
As fluff let fly.
At this sky's edge
Your world, as wide
In caring for!
What bangs on for priority
Cringe in no more.
I am alone in the house.
This is as it should be.
My hands have become idle in their pursuit for comfort, endlessly reaching for a warmth they will not find.
I am alone in this house.
There is a collection of Bram Stoker's works on my nightstand. The book is from Europe. I have never been.
This is as it should be.
My eyes are dry and unresponsive to the words that flicker across my vision. These words compete for a second of my time, a moment to be observed as they were meant to be. They exist only to me and may disappear entirely if my gaze retreats. They cannot exist without a reader, and I cannot compel myself to entertain the notion of being with another’s voice.
I am alone in this house.
This is as is should be.
I walked in the garden
yeah, that was me
I stepped on a plant
accidentally.
In my defense it was gloomy,
there was no moon
I would have missed it
if it had been noon
I’m afraid it was fatal
you’re the first with the results
it was limp and unresponsive
and it had no pulse
I decided I’d bury it - it was gone.
I’d do it after jogging, about dawn
I thought it improvident and beyond needs,
it turned out fine - it recovered - it’s a weed..
.
Songs for this:
A Girl In Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing) by Romeo Void
Can't Be Sure by The Sundays
There’s something in our entrails knows this dread.
You hear it scratching – that’s alarm enough.
That snorting half-suppressed, that flagstone scuffed,
a passing shadow of a massive head,
and we scent darkness, dark beyond the dead.
It hovers like Unreason. Does it know?
Canals of self-containment overflow,
like wits’ weak walls, at that approaching tread.
Our fingers, feeling for that flimsy thread,
Seem senseless, unresponsive: can’t perform
the simplest act. No order now, no norm.
The Void insists. The Hunger will be fed.
With locusts of the Labyrinth in swarm,
the mitochondria of Panic sprout and spread.
and our next reason is lesson for lesson of reason removes me and begins a new seasons discipline of natures unresponsive unawareness of my reason for her hurtless path, noble children are needing to be dropped on the head there
Compassion Fatigue
Resentment looks a lot like Narcan in a sharp
and feels like it’s forcing out my will.
I grab them both; Naloxone and the tarp,
the outcome undetermined by my skill.
Same guy, same place, same drug; third time today,
his unresponsive body cold to touch.
Compassion has fatigued and crawled away,
when I see something tiny in his clutch;
A crucifix, a cross is glinting gold.
Immediate withdrawal floods through his veins;
I’ve plunged the needle, and I tightly hold;
his bloodied eyes snap alive with pain
despite the death wish of his toxic dope,
a Savior finds him worthy of His hope.
Father’s toes are steel-capped,
Rough, worn-out leather, a layer
Of thick polish that cracks
With each bend, each step.
His feet carry a child’s weight,
A bundle of laughter and bouncing curls
Balanced at his ankles, shuffling
Across outdated carpeted floors.
A moment of decompression
After a day of hard labour, father
Carried the child from infantile morning
To the matured evening.
There came a time when the child,
Older and weary, thrust father’s feet
Upon her own, her arms under his.
Mimicking the act of childhood,
The child walked her fatherly puppet,
The body limp, unresponsive,
Across those once-carpeted floors
And into a place of refuge.
Father and child rely on each other
To pick the other from sullen ground,
Shake off the dirt and grime of worry
And lift them pridefully to their feet.
Father and child are joined in blood,
The same small features, the wide smile
That consumes half the face, and the ethic
Of working hard for little merit.
Father’s steel-capped toes stepped aside,
Gave way to slow movements with purpose,
And heavy breaths subside
Any desire to pick up the pace.
“All a man really wants, is a girl who looks good in a bikini.”—Jack Freestone
All a “man” really wants is a “girl”
who looks good in a bikini?
All a woman wants is someone
who really doesn’t care, or is it
just to feel warm sea-side air
caress her chest instead of nylon
and play once again, summer child,
outside a body of which she’s too aware,
alive in movements unbound by eyes
and unweighted by prudish gravity,
to wade into the froth of waves breaking wild
around her, an improvised dance that swirls
in cadence to life’s rhythms, wise
to no man’s guile, unresponsive to his gambit.
In a humming white room
mother was up late but unresponsive.
Her face and body hooked into tubes,
We stood around whispering inanities
not listening to our words
just the gasping sounds
of the life support machinery.
A young nurse bustles in:
"Maybe tomorrow
Doctor says it's touch and go."
The next morning it was go
and we were late.
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