Touchers

I see you in small, state-supported
art museums where there aren't
enough guards to watch your every move.

You touch things.
You stealthily sidle up to a nice
bright Renoir, and extend your
index finger until its pink pad just
touches a rosy cheek or
dimpled chin of the painted surface.
You withdraw your finger quickly, and then
you tilt your head
slightly backwards and off to one side.
You seem very pleased at the boldness of your act,
as if you'd just touched old man Renoir himself,
and gotten away with it.
He was sitting in his wheelchair and his
nurse was dozing.  You poked his fat bloated belly
and whispered in his ear.  You told him
you'd like to
piss on him if you could get him alone,
and stain his fame, and wet
whatever luck it was that garnered him all this
attention, a place on this hallowed wall.

You step back from the canvas.
Your eyes are hard; they glow
with the secret triumph of
having touched
what you have every right to touch.
After all, you're a citizen. You pay
your taxes and
they helped pay for this thing.

There is sometimes genuine admiration
in your eyes,
as if you truly like the
painting and wouldn't mind
owning it yourself.

Generally you are nicely
dressed, prosperous-looking;
sometimes, after the touching of
a canvas, or the tapping of a
marble statue with your manicured
nail, you pause and
lift your finger to your nose,
sniffing delicately, as if
to assure yourself that
you actually did it -- just like, long ago,
you got your finger part-way into a
nice juicy back-seat vagina, and the proof
was right there for you to smell,
and savor, and take home to bed with you.

Sometimes a guard is lurking nearby.
Sometimes it might appear that
you're not being sneaky enough --
but I suspect that
you're just checking out
boundaries, testing borders,
making sure there's still
order throughout the land.
Perhaps you're even showing off
for the guard who observes you
as you move close to a painting,
then closer, very close, acting as if you
just want to see the texture better, perhaps,
or study a subtle detail.
You extend your finger as
if to point out something
to a friend, but the guard
knows you're touching the painting
before you're hardly sure of it yourself.

"Please don't touch," he says quickly.
And then you look at each other,
each with the same
semi-apologetic flicker of recognition
that does not judge or accuse,
but simply acknowledges
that each of you is here, existing, doing
what you must.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem appeared in Chiron Review, Vol XII, #3, Autumn 1993)