I need to be touched and held.
As a human, I need that like
I need oxygen, food and poetry.
It's not ******; it has nothing to
do with a relationship, it just has
to be someone I've known for
a long time and we care about
each other.
I don't want to be accosted or
held by a stranger.
I boxed for a few years, and it
wouldn't bode well for that individual.
This world is brutal, we are dealing
with a pandemic.
Life can be cruel beyond belief.
I need to be touched and held.
I need to feel a heartbeat next to mine.
This life is so fleeting, one minute I'm
five years old burying my goldfish in
the backyard, crying because I don't
understand death and the next
minute 48 years have passed by.
I've buried my Mom, Dad, two
brothers, and over 20 of my
close friends.

When I'm holding someone,
and someone is holding me,
I feel alive and I'm pretty
sure they do too.
As a poet, my senses are
on high alert:
touch, taste, smell etc...
I need to taste the salt from
a gentle kiss on her forehead.
I need to feel the smoothness of
her cheek on my shoulder as we
watch a movie or talk about
distant memories.
I need to feel her smooth feet when
I rub them after she's had a
tumultuous day at work.
This ******* Coronavirus has
got everyone so afraid of
contact and I get it.
But if I die as a direct result of
touching or being touched by
someone that I love...
I can think of much worse
ways to go.

I still remember our first date
we talked for hours, it was great

I still remember your cute smile
now I haven’t seen it for a while

I still remember your silly jokes
they made me wrinkle my nose

I still remember our first kiss
those soft lips I already miss

I still remember your hands in mine
and how you kissed me down my spine

I still remember the way you called me baby
your eyes looking at me like I am your lady

- gio, 31.03.2020

To stay away from the bodies of other beings
To keep a safe distance
To deny the pleasure of touch,

As much to make it seem a new concept
We’ve been distancing long before the panic spread

To stay away from feeling other’s feelings
To keep a safe distance
To deny the vulnerability of connection,

Give credit where it’s due
To distance is the best we do.

Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness—time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?—insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask—

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?

Keywords/Tags: Gaza, mothers, touch, tenderness, dove, shelter, wing, coos, sings, babies, fledglings, love, god

At Once
by Michael R. Burch

Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.

And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet—there was more!
I awoke from long darkness,

and yet—she was there.
I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.

Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly and Grassroots Poetry. Keywords/Tags: Epistle, love, antique, prayer, pain, shadows, lair, touch, heal, healing, share, sharing, companionship

Corona
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
  without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
    but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
      felt more than seen.
      I was eighteen,
    my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
  Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.

There was an instant . . .
  without words, but with a deeper communion,
    as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
      liquidly our lips met
      —feverish, wet—
    forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
  in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.

Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.

With all the understandable gloom, doom and despair over the coronavirus, I was reminded of this early poem of mine that used the term "corona" in a much more positive light. I wrote this poem around age 18 and it has been published by Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Webring. Keywords/Tags: Corona, coronavirus, touch, union, communion, sighs, expectation, unity, trumpets, heart, pounding, ***, arousal, union, ecstasy, consummation, consecration, omen, comet, shooting star, talisman, moonrise, moon rising

It's this haze of neon that makes us dumb and better
for the wrong reasons. The gin and
your lipstick on my mouth and my eyes on your collarbone
because I swear to god it's the best ******* thing I've ever seen.
Intoxication seems to be a mood these days,
a feeling. In the evening air into which we give.
You pull me out of my head and into the world. Into
you. And I
probably won't forgive you for that down the road.

Everything else is everything else. Blurred,
smoked out by the fire
that is your touch. Bring your heat closer.
Closer. And closer still. Burn me out, please,
so I don't have to see
tomorrow. Next week, next month, next year
alone. Let me indulge while I can.
Because you give me euphoria
but I'm learning
that all I give you is a buzz.