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