Nothing of Nothing–
the wolf licks his snout
blood, smeared, too thick to sing
behind the silence–mortal grout–
in dens where flesh might reign as king
of peace, a child, too fresh to pout
silent as the rain spring brings.
Tag Archives: Silence
Winter-White Haiku
Winter in Rockford, MI. By Chris Galford.
Cold…so cold. High of 14 today. Inside writing, doing my best to hide from the chill. Not as much snow as in the photo – the picture’s from back in 2009 – but the wind and the ice don’t make things any better. On the bright side, a little cocoa and some tiny marshmallows do lead to the occasional Winter-ku…
White sea enfold me
All is silence in the rough
Hands ache summer’s cry.
Elysium
By and Copyright: Trent Chau
Desolate banks
into the dawn enfold, the secret:
life runs through it
in the silence and the rush,
burrowing deep, Elysian bedrock—
there is never nothing in Wonderland.
*For One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry–the prompt today is a picture by the talented Trent Chau, a Georgia-based photographer. Beautiful shot – I found the words came rushing right out of it. Check out my interview with him when you get a chance – very insightful guy!
I Still Have a Voice
Just because I cannot hear
Does not mean I have no voice.
My hands are my words
Flowing out like rivers
And these eyes,
They see
Though you look at me as a man blind—
Blind enough to see
Your hands in motion
Signing off my rights
Signing off the hope
That brought me here today.
I am not silent
But you silence me
Bury me in paperwork
Another numerical nonentity
Less a face than a dollar sign—
Black ink rain down
And you break my world
With a pen for a sword—
How can you look at us this way
Hear our pleas, hear our cries
And still sit, as statues
Unmoved, unbroken
Drowning us
With care.
This Wednesday’s post has several dedications. It is first and foremost dedicated to the Deaf Education and American Sign Language students at MSU, who this year, as part of budget cuts, had their programs completely cut from the academia here. I also dedicate this to the deaf community at large, who all have felt the pain of this loss. Eastern Michigan University is the only other University in Michigan to offer such programs to the community.
As usual, it is also for the wonderful One Shot Poetry Wednesdays–once you’ve had a look, check out some of the other One Shot Poets as well– they’re a skilled bunch of poets, looking to form a community and support one another. Enjoy!
Photos by myself, Chris Galford, from the final MSU Board of Trustees meeting last school year. The alphabet presented below is the alphabet of American Sign Language–a language certain board members previously claimed was “not a real language.”
Sweet Escape
Sweet escape
The mind’s surrender
Serenade of oblivion—
I close my eyes
And it goes, goes
The world
Absence of thought
In the darkness of being
Silence
All reconsiderations
This mind is empty now—
And the stars may shine beyond
But this twisted moon is in eclipse
And I am sinking
Down into the blackest hole
Of existence—
You see me, but I
No I do not see you,
I think no more
Therefore
I am
Not.
The Moment
FIFA eat your heart out:
Such fury in a moment!
There is a hush before the roar,
silent intakes, glowing hot
the eyes alight to see
the rush of bodies.
Tumultuous crash,
explodes in multitude of howls
as bones and blood are rent–
on, on, into the breach
spilling over fields of blood.
Dig in, draw back
the swing is in the air–
the crowd is nothing less than chaos,
buffeting the air
as hope and skill pours on into the mass
and presses to the
Goal!
There is no rage so great
as this running of the bulls.
Nothing ends in Nothing
I thought I saw the street
But the signs were bare,
No cars or coaches anywhere.
Cracked cobbles
Ran the road—
Broken bricks
Snapped beneath the silence.
Such oppression—
The strongest path
Would fade.
Round and round
The wheels spin—
But in the silence,
All is still.
The world dies
Without the motion–
Unused.
All I taste is Salt
I twist
Like paper on the wind;
The earth batters me
And I dip down, down
Into the crystal nothing—
No sky above,
No earth below—
Pressure building
Strangling the life
From hearth and home—
No warmth
Down below the waves,
My tumult silent
In the swallowing mass
That caresses all the hearing
From my mind.
All I taste
Is salt.
The Silence
If I brave nightmares
The dark will tear asunder—
Silence breaks with dawn.
