There has been silence
Deafening from my pen
In recent months –
A tumultuous silence,
An agitated silence,
A frustrated silence,
An inevitable silence –
Brought on by inaction.
Just as life deadens when
It seems finally ready to alight,
This silence descended just
As I was finding my voice.
It has reigned over me
In silence,
With a silence the silence
Is envious of –
Even though it is of
Its own orchestration.
It is such a silence –
A deprecating silence,
An intimidating silence,
A battering silence,
An intruding silence –
That takes thoughts
Of constructing narrative
And distorts them,
The void bitterly
Betraying its empty spaces
By filling them with
Lethargic apathy.
Months pass by
As Spring blossoms to Summer,
With hours clocking up
In a place filled with
An oppressive reticence
Guised within
Idle conversation.
My pen gathers dust
On the shelf back home
While the silence collects
On my portable pedestal,
Weighing heavily
In my chest,
Getting heavier
All the time.
That silence becomes a drug
Inhaled with
An addict’s relish
Through the ear in the dark;
Its embrace easily accepted
Because it means
Taking flight
To a desk in my room
Without a license,
Within isolation.
But it is at a festival –
Exposed,
Where silence is vapour-thin,
Mythical,
Without form or shape
But with its participants
Nonetheless –
That it becomes progressive again,
Twisting into spiralling
Columns of sudden noise
That my weakened wrist
Struggles to record perfectly.
Five minutes of production
Beneath a sporadic ray of sun
Within my tent
And all is well once more –
Because silence only ever
Becomes its bearer’s end.
