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Tag: silence

Tell Me Anything

In the silence coming down
at the dimming of the day,
something whispers on the breeze
and it takes my breath away.

Does it tell me anything
that I don’t already know?
Is it more than could have beens
and a couple told you sos?

In the silence of the night
after the sun has gone to bed,
something sings a simple song
that just echoes in my head.

When the words come on the wind
do they tickle in your ear?
Do they brush away the clouds
in the evening sky, so clear?

As the hours slip away
does the music slowly fade
into memory and myth,
ancient stories and charade?

In the silence, when you breathe
in the taste of new day,
something rests upon your tongue
but you’ve got nothing left to say.

Does it matter much at all,
what you mean and what you do?
Will the day continue on
without making much of you?

So the hours come and go,
yet the song still wants to play.
In the end, who really knows
whether it should be that way?

08 MAY 2025

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The Undertone: terza rima

Underneath the skin, a single notion
supports how life unfolds from start to end.
Beneath the bustle of the world’s commotion,

it floats in just a whisper on the wind.
In quiet moments, it can be detected,
first here, then there, and then it’s gone again.

This song speaks to the lonely and infected,
the disenfranchised and the left behind.
To listen is feel far less neglected,

to find relief to ease a troubled mind;
and in the falling darkness, light a candle
that saves the world from stumbling on, blind.

If you sit still and listen, you will hear
a music that transcends both hate and fear.

02 JUN 2017

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I Cannot Speak: rondeau

I cannot speak of what I’ve seen:
the smell of bleach is on those scenes,
and faintly, on each memory’s breath,
a subtle scent of loss and death,
with hints of joy and hope between.

I hear the dripping fat, I dream
of crackles in the kerosene
that sizzle ’til there’s nothing left;
I cannot speak.

I stand aside, and watch, and lean
a while. I wait as the new green
begins to sprout amidst this death;
a garden is a grave, reset,
that in each’s season prayer and sweat
writes of the sacred and obscene
I cannot speak.

04 MAY 2017

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If Seeking: rionnard tri-nard

If you would seek wisdom,
the walls of your prison
must be made a prism.
To purify vision,

let light begin creeping
like mice, softly sneaking,
almost still half sleeping –
if wisdom you’re seeking.

03 MAY 2017

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The Wild Wind: droighneach

Believe me: there is nothing evident
found in the wild wind’s sad apology
that echoes the swift, mad accident
of an empirical chronology.

The sound careens off the walls and multiplies,
pale murmurs slipping along an endless cavity
where caught words glow and briefly shine, like fireflies,
then gently fade in obscurity.

02 MAR 2017

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Listen: cinquain

Listen.
Let the sound come;
as you sense this new song,
pretend you just developed ears,
and hear.

Listen.
The sensation
of experience finds you;
feel the music filling your bones
with light.

Listen.
What you’re hearing
isn’t just some symphony
composed of random, crashing waves
of sound.

Listen
to the heartbeat
underneath the octaves;
in that small space between the breaths
it sounds.

Listen.
Let the sound come;
if you let yourself sing,
you can alter the melody
of life.

09 FEB 2017

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If Privacy is Power

If privacy is power,
then our public-facing selves
are palimpsests of who we are;
and that which we pretend to be
(that hides our truest form)
has more in common with a mist
than blood, muscle or bone.

If privacy is freedom,
then construction of our cells
begins the moment we arrive
and lasts throughout all time.

If privacy is sacred,
then our gods are merely dust;
and our Valhalla in the clouds?
Bankrupt and turned to rust.

If privacy is power,
guard your every waking thought,
and never show just what you know;
your shy, divergent secrets
are what make you worth recall.
There is no greater good that needs
to know it all, right now.

15 DEC 2016

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