Poem: Locks Without Keys

Skin hunger in all its luxurious textures.

Locks Without Keys This constant and unending yearn for touch, pleading of skin, softly textured against skin Murmured words, warmth of bodies, stretched The intimacy of waking to tousled hair, cast across a pillow, caressed in sleep These things consume my waking hours Interventions in my day, locks without keys Self-exile, yet yearning for a tearing down, a deconstruction, magnificently conceived Practiced inelegantly, just behind the eyes Out of reach and bound away from knowing, the blind constraint, the fear of nakedness Not the common stripping-off of clothes, but the un-layering of protected tenderness, shyly revealed Spoken only in the mind Blood red thoughts, peeled back and salted down Preserved for now against the decay of rejection, or acceptance, or something in between A tight-wire never-land, too unsteady to walk No net, the first step never taken, turning back Imprisoning ourselves within the walls of solitude Shuffling feet in timeworn pathways of avoidance, eyes cast down, sharp edges of life worn smooth Waiting for some unknown jailor, jangling keys, to come and slide back bolts, un-tumble tumblers

This poem is included in Jim Freeman's poetry collection CORNER OF MY MIND available here in print or as an e-Book in your favorite formats.