12.08.2004

Late at night, I'm most apt to write. Last night was no exception. I dug out my trusty copy of "The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspiration for Writing".

Here's a draft. In the next version, I'll replace the "we" and "ourselves" at the end with something more introspective. That said, I give you...

something about silence

“Write about a noise or a silence that won’t go away”
- Monica Wood


innumerable voices clog my
mind with histories buried alive

I cannot sleep through graveyard
cries, the desperate clawing clamor.

remembrance pricks my
conscience, pries open eyelids

crusted shut with slumber.
swabs clean ears plugged with

cotton promises that God will
deliver us from His evil Creation;

humankind. stuck on this planet
in the stillness of a universe too vast

to comprehend, stuck in consciousness
too minute to comprehend a universe

greater than our God. I, human,
being in this silence, hum a church tune

or invoke the Elder Words scribes
and griots gift generations.

still peace comes to me as it
comes to all in the moment

of accepting, quietly, the inevitable
loneliness we drown out with words

and song, or escape through ritual
myth and legend. we abhor the

smallness of life, elaborately gate
ourselves from real community

until silent stillness compels us
to hum a different tune