reminder: sight, sound, smell, taste and physical feeling (touch)

~for yocum~

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without our five senses, what purpose, we serve?

hindered from the verification of our existence,
great then the irony then that the scourge announces
its presence by taking our presents, our very present,
coming cat quiet, announcing itself by thieving two,
our ability to smell and taste, that, only the beginning

later it steals speech.
but no need, nothing left to say or even hear, speech’s reciprocal,
the throat filled with the tube of oxygen containing no words,
some call it breathing, me, I call it a slower, ungentle, silenced dying

the medications are for the pain,
making the eyes sleep a neutered constant in a closeted body,
still, better not to see your own desiccated withering,
but all this, even this,  I could tolerate!

but not to feel your touch,
oh god, give me that!
sensing your touch informs that I, still, I am!
touching you confirms I am greater than my ossified body!

the sense of your skin means this,
that I will live even if death relieves my entirety
but no, touching is forbidden most of all,
and I am inconsolable, gone the greatest pleasure

the first is the last final sense taken,
now it’s too late to turn the other cheek,
I touch myself, but it’s evidence of nothing, cause
now that I’m dead, my only pleasured sense remaining is

my inconsolability,
the last remaining sentry,
the immortal and final
guardian of my heart