Torn


The internet’s all show, no actual cunnilingus
has transpired between us. This has been
smoke signals from eye to eye. And just
like the telegraph, the telephone
gave us a means to the ends of staying
ever closer to home, ever farther
from the ear we’d dot-dash
or whisper into, what a sad story
for flesh, marooned. First by the womb,
then the word traveled fast and free
of lips, now your hips can thrive
in my brain without entering my life.
I might as well be on the moon.
The evolution of communication’s
to mythologize togetherness
as we drift entropically apart.
That’s what the kids
call a thesis statement. But god
you’re hot, and your crescendo
of breath so fully apes
the real deal, is it possible
we can be islanded and still come
to prefer absence to presence,
the digital to the palpable?
I fear the question answers itself
by nodding to the fact that I
can write a poem and you read it
with no hand having touched metal
or paper or words that don’t dissolve
as soon as a switch is thrown.
Half of my soul says, Get used to it.
The other million percent begs, Don’t.

Autor: Bob Hicok