Silence

Silence

I love communication

with silence

It says so much more than

the flicker of lips

in candlelight

It's especially useful at a distance

The planets and stars

told humanity

truth with it

Wives and angry friends

use it frequently

After one extended silence

a person knows exactly where

the switches are

since darkness surpasses

even a wordless dream

Any query brings

the dreaded

“If you don't know...”

It is not gold

because gold will purchase

all the chatter

anyone can stand

at the end of your arm

staring into the noisy abyss

A length of rope with which

to hang oneself

brings on

the kind of noiselessness

we are all applying for

at the moment

of our first wail

Return us to a heartbeat

it says

or less

much less

We only have to wait

much too long

through interminable

meetings and industry

best left for the deaf

How I envy them

some days

With deafness

all say the same nothings

the hearing can't understand

those useful hand gestures

one has to learn

in order to

get yelled at

Imagine a world

where the numbers of hearing

and deaf are reversed

There would be no mufflers

on engines

There would be contempt

for musicians with no support

for concert halls and orchestras

who performed badly

With silence

we know where we stand

at the center

of a great city

a nothing

a nobody

a zero point zero

Chopin or Led Zeppelin

will lead you away

from your own creations

Something as small

as a poem

is a noise

with which to rend

all others

with bombs in their heads

See?

I am the king of crash

the wandering boom

from whom you flee

Only the ice that

falls from the eves

into a drift

is the Aztec knife

ripping open my chest

sending me where

even friends want

me to be silent

Silence is my destination

all I ever knew

all I ever will know

will be lost in its library

Here is my ticket

to an empty shelf

no one will dust

My silent cough

attests to its reality

its gold-less beaches

filled with unknown beauty

illuminated by a cold sun

on a tumbling rock

that watches itself slow

as the light recedes

across its expanding years

which cannot count themselves

Barry G. Wick