hursday. Soft light. The motherlode.
Sheets of absurdity rain down in
clumsy torrents -
silence bends each rule
of acoustics.
Hands are too soft
to pick it up.
All this sharp grief.
All this grief that spins
a virile web through
the doorways; the hearts;
beneath foundations -
a pounding tapestry;
a garotte for the
unctuous air.

This silence isn't.
Frozen polyphony,
idling for the multilayered thaw
of another grey day,
washed in tomorrow's same grey tub.
color-drained, bleached of meaning:
it's not silence -
this hibernating sound -
an ear to a wall declares
there is always something
gasping,
some small sound given
to something that should
be unheard of.

Silence.
The last bankrupt vein
has been fed; the last girl,
beaten;
the last vile name
sleeps in a violent breath.
4am and it peals
from the carpets
and the bedsprings,
and the spot outside the door where
the man, machete depleted,
lay bleeding. Everything screams -
quietly.

The line's end.
Too numb
to be terrified.