Silence

Silence

She lurks within all this world's dark.
She hides between words and sounds, and never
Are we free of her. All of our screaming
Life -- music, cars, blessed noise, and ragged
Voices rasping in the night – is the fire
In which we burn, avoiding that still kiss.

Why is Silence’s touch feared as is Death’s kiss?
Would Death, hidden within Silence’s dark
Home, take us to burn in another fire?
That final – and great – Lady has never
Needed to hide, nor to heed our ragged
Pleas. She claims us all, the quiet and the screaming.

Why waste your time in fighting and screaming,
Struggle to prolong life with one more kiss?
Our fight to live gets more and more ragged
Until everything is lost in the dark.
Silence is not Death – and they were never
More than sisters – though born from one fire.

Change must reach us like a raging fire
Burning away the sound of our screaming,
Leaving as ash the Silence we never
Acknowledge. Feel her touch, her gentle kiss.
Stop inventing noises to hear in the dark –
By doing so, we run ourselves ragged.

Our Book of Days is torn and ragged,
A scrapbook of the times we spent our fire
On sound – Orchestral Maneuvers in the dark.
What would be left if we stop our screaming?
What would we learn with each soft silent kiss?
It’s something we’ve tried, as of yet, never.

Yet does she complain and rage? No, never.
She will wait in raiments which are ragged,
Scorned all our lives due to her sister’s kiss,
Our fear that life is nothing more than fire,
A curtain falling on audience screaming,
And that we’ll be left alone in the dark.

So kiss me now, sage Silence, and never
Shall I fear the dark, nor turn myself ragged.
I tend my fire; spend no words on screaming.