Originally posted 8/13/2011.
How can you deal
with it being so loud?
Recall the times
you went unheard.
It seems, sometimes,
that the words form
a powerful flood.
What is there to do
when you’re drowning in it?
Recall how the air
you pull into your chest
when you break surface
is cleaner and fresher
for having been riled.
But they use so many words!
How are you supposed to hear them all?
Recall your toys
and how they all got time
from you in turns.
Move yourself among the words
in that same loving way.
It seems, sometimes,
that the passion overpowers
the poetry. How then
do you worship the craft?
Recall the difference
between rock and jazz,
how each trips
a different trigger.
One does not do
as the other does.
Each suits its time.
But it seems sometimes
that it’s been said before,
sometimes right before.
How do you
tell the difference?
Recall the story
of Cain and Abel,
how hearing it once
did not stop fratricide.
Are you saying it’s all
a matter of memory?
It is all a matter of memory.
Recall the campfires,
the hunt and the grief of
how new we were once
to simply having tongues
that could do this —
every time,
it is new to a new listener;
every time,
memory lodges in one ear,
even as it goes out another.
But even after all that,
it seems so
overwhelming,
so unnecessary.
Recall the first thing
I told you,
that you should recall
what it was to be
unheard.
What part of being human
is so lost to you
that you should feel
so uncomfortable
in the presence
of a need
such as this?
