poem

 Acoustics

There are those who hope that

The other side of suicide

Is a white room with perfect acoustics

Perfectly calibrated to amplify 

The whispered reminiscences

Of familiar voices who have

Borne witness to the otherwise fullness

Of a prematurely curtailed life.

The sonorous resonance of sadness

Reverberates off these walls

And the lone curtained window quavers

Always on the edge of a radial shatter.

This dream is the last 

Solace of all defeated souls,

Where there is a first realization,

Finally, once gone, of what

It means to be deeply missed.

But this was never a real place

Nor even a conceptual solace

Where fearful stowaways could

Surreptitiously hide, gravitating 

Toward the negative spaces

Behind curtains or lurking

Around corners just off stage.

Everyone sounds as sad 

As you used to feel.

And maybe that can be enough,

A small salvation, a final

Feeble attempt at self forgiveness

Which is the best heaven,

Given the circumstances, that

One can hope to get.

The other side of this choice 

Is a blank page on which

Everyone else gets to write

The story of your dumb, abbreviated days.

But you don’t get a pencil

And you’re not allowed to erase

Anything you don't like, because

Every heaven must have its own hell.

But the reality is here,

In a quiet room, the window 

Cracked to allow a breeze

Which carries the song

Of a fat speckled wood thrush

And that’s you at the desk, hunched 

Over piles of blank, loose leaf sheets 

And your corded veins are surging with life

And there’s so many words straining to be released 

And you write and you write

In such a mad rush the desk shakes 

And your hand starts to cramp

Until all the pages are filled

With an invisible ink

That only you can read  

9/30/21