on Intimacy I

For all the poets’ valiant attempts to wring potency from words, it seems we are moved more by the unexpected brush of a stranger’s hand on a crowded subway than the most piercing of prose. For all of the attempts to illicit even a shadow of genuine human sensation by invoking paltry placeholders, we are left with only simulacra. All of this despite the abundance of terms and the poets’ talents for creative employment. So how then did it come to pass, that we have chosen from out of our inept lexicon the drabbest of colors with which to not only describe the range of human intimacy but to prescribe it?