Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Poem a Day 2015: 7

I'm not going to lie. This one was like pulling teeth.

Violence

Today I am infected with silence.
It wells up in me from some unknown source,
plugging me with its passive violence.

This internal blankness feels quite serious.
I’m used to a stream of images, of course,
not suffering the infection of silence,

where that stream seems used up, spent,
drained of an essential force,
plugged up with some passive violence.

Could I blame the loss on age and travel? Miles pent
up in memory, overfilled, bent, lost, the worst
piled up to infect the (blessed) mental silence?

No. Blame takes too much energy. Silence
slams me against its mental dam. I am hoarse with
not-shouting, plugged passive with its violence,

drowning in nothing, breathing cold silence,
sinking to the bottom of a soundless river, cursed
with the fatal infection of silence,
plugged passive with its frozen violence.

1 comment:

vstefani said...

and yet you express it so wonderfully well!