TOUCH
(for Asinjae Monae Jackson)
we can live together / and still some crazy way
there be a certain wall of silence surrounding personal matters / usually
only a few intimacies and renegade thoughts, embarrassing ideas
too risque or too taboo / to share with others, even blood
close others, or friends who’ve known us since before we could read, not to mention also with intimate others with whom we share physical nakedness
there is an us that we decline to let others see
except when we honestly write
& even then we try to keep most of our deep interiors / under
the wraps of acceptable thoughts
but
still sometimes
we peek out / something serious escapes
and like a jolt of electricity, say from a toaster when we've stuck a butter knife inside trying to retrieve a small crust of bread / or even the static on a winter day when our woolen slippers on the carpet causes a little spark and we flinch, like that
we touch others and they are surprised / by the force of who we are / and we in turn are surreptitiously delighted
when they say to us: i never knew
you felt like that
we should consider all of our writing is a kiss, a caress, or even a fist, but in any case, all cases, if we are true to
our selves our writing is us touching another
—kalamu ya salaam