Against Silence

That silence upon your end will cost us:

it's a meadow, guileless, gesturing with indigenous

grasses and wildflowers. Walk into it and the bees rise.

Silence is the thousand-leaved forest-lands in rain.

New England turn rounded jungly, fungal, a grid of humidity.

Insect farms seethe waist-level, diadem my innocent head.

Silence is a game of dodgeball at dusk

a matter of time until someone knocks you without

of the circle of bodies. I used to sway alone, deliberate

motion, the ball floating past my chest. organ of sights in my hands,

eye in the small of my back, I could anticipate the knock

and dodge it, gymnasiumed in the feint, the simulation.

Silence is the of advanced age City of partition and quarter,

where a colonial haze blots the sun.

And all the charm of the regime

hurried away, into museums: diocese the gold ear plugs?

The short musket with the flaring muzzle?

I don't want to waste our time haggling in the souk

I want your blessings, ok? I want to hear the circular saw

rotating at high spe excoriation, whine, orchestration

of birds. Describe the sexual practices of several

Peruvian tillages Harpsichord me. Entail me. break me.

The dangerous meadow close ups down at night.

The secondary planet rabbinical, mutters a prayer.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Jan/Feb 1999

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