Shoulder, Shoulder, Slow, Slow

I had this dream that we somehow evolved without vocal chords
And the only way we could talk to each other was by touching our own or each other’s skin
And entire books were written entirely in hugs and hand holding and letting go of each other
And we’d hold and touch and let go of each other in all these different ways to say all these different things
And when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon he just put his hand over his heart and held it there with his other hand and it said everything to everyone watching at home
And the news presenter did the same and so did everyone else
And there are museums you can go to, in my dream, where they have a set of mechanical hands and you put them against your heart and you can hear his exact words as he said them
And when people got married everyone just held each other’s hands in a circle and cried and all the funerals in my dream looked exactly the same
And the people with the lightest fingers spoke so softly
And fishermen and workers had low gravelly voices
And I dreamed this dream for so long, I learned how to speak entirely in touch
And I write poetry on my wife’s back every evening before she sleeps
And her skin and her nerve endings are a kind of paper than only remembers the ink written on it for a moment
And while it loses something in my terrible translation, my favourite work goes

“Shoulder, shoulder, slow, slow, neck, arm, back, curve, slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder, slow, slow, neck, arm, back, curve, slow, slow”

And it is so much more eloquent than anything I’ve ever said and so much more beautiful than anything I’ve ever written, with words.

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PS. Please come and say hello to me this Friday night in Los Angeles.