the poetry of Charles Fry

6 December 1996

this record is for You

I think that I'd rather forgotten
what it felt like to have gentle fingers touching my heart --
or even to have some one stand close to me for that matter.
I had started to think that I was the only creation,
Unconsciously pretending to be some thing so much not human.
With a small mechanical attachment in my back
where I could put in the crank and turn my self.

One day I turned off all of the lights in the house.
And all of the heat also, and I closed the blinds.
I lay down in the middle of my bedroom floor.
It got very cold.
Too cold.

"I'm not a machine, I'm a man."
"I'm not an animal, I'm a man."
"You are not a man, you are a god."

It is very difficult to learn how to speak again.
It is very difficult to learn how to live again.
Some where I have the impression that
I am living on borrowed time.
That you were sent just to teach me -- to awaken me.

I think that I rather like
what it feels like to have gentle fingers touching my heart --
or even to have some one standing close to me for that matter.

Copyright © 1996 Charles Fry