Venn and the art of human contact

He can’t hear the clock ticking

but he’s troubled by the senseless chatter

of its pendulum. He hears

strangers waving from across the Strand,

and at airports the man on the tarmac,

the one with ping pong bats for hands,

is louder than the silently sliding jets.

She could paint you a wordscape

from a thunderclap or a symphony.

She can hear the tap-tap-tap

rising up from a crowded pavement,

but not the cyclist, who’s racing

to beat another changing light,

until that is the Doppler shifts.

So he grabs her arm to keep her

from stepping into the hurtling

silence, but there it ends, for all the world

they hold in common is that one touch.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet