Tag Archives: quarantine

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Skin Hunger

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If you had told me I would have
yearned for a simple handshake,
months from now,
I would have scoffed at such a silly notion.

If you would had said a hug from
a loved one was a distant memory
and that only through dreaming in bed
at night could such an implausible embrace happen,
I would have laughed in your face.

No light touches, no manly shoulder to shoulder hugs,
no holding hands, no fist bumps,
no incidental brushing of skin against
skin in the everyday going on
of life.
None of that.

I am bereft and unaware of the warmth
or coldness of a cheek or simple palms of another,
stolen is the smile behind
a mask that might have touched my soul
as they looked my way in the incidental
happenings of a mere
day.

There is a gnawing
Deep
A pang
Inside
Screaming
A hunger
threatening to consume
To feel
To know
the innocent
intimate
touch
of another.

by Philip Wardlow, May 12th, 2020

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Everybody is a Fucking Expert

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People become afflicted
become sickened
A Mother dies, a Daddy dies
a Brother, a Sister,
a Nephew, an Aunt,
that crazy fun Uncle,
well he’s no longer around.
Yet some know better,
some are fucking experts on everything now:
Epidemiology, Politics
and the Constitution, here
come take your diploma
young ignorant man.
They have just crawled from
the primordial ooze,
but without an ounce of knowledge or true
reflection,
they know the why, the what, and the wherefore
of it all.
Without doubt or reservation,
they string together tens of hundreds
of stories into
a conspiracy of disdain and ridiculousness.
Anxiety now rules an already twisted logic system,
mutating them all into something
new and improved,
The truest most deadly virus of a
a thing called the Fool.

by Philip Wardlow April, 2020