6E22
First poem of new mini-series
A reading of this poem will air live on an upcoming episode of “Unveiling the Soul” on the “Architecture of Silence”—May 12 @ 7 pm Central European Time on Radio Worm. Thank you to the host, Anna Spasova for her exceptional prompt: “What lives in the space between words? The breath before you speak. The pause after the music ends. The weight of a room when someone leaves.”
I wrote this piece at midnight on a flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai, circumventing Iran. Anna’s prompt kicked off several poems that I made over the following two weeks as I traveled Thailand with a good friend. I’ll be releasing them as a mini-series starting, now!
Quiet
is what people call me
when my brain
won’t shut up,
but my mouth stays
static.
I don’t remember the sound of silence.
In the stillness,
my think box rattles like an alphabet,
rearranging
reconfiguring meaning,
exhausted of all relevance.
I’m on an airplane,
hurling over a world
sleeping through another war.
The light is low inside this cylinder.
The light is cinnamon.
I close my eyes;
a baby has an earache.
Too much pressure on its future.
Does it cry for fear of silence?
A scream
the only letter in its alphabet.
We once knew true silence,
suspended in the womb,
unanchored to the noise,
tethered only to a steady heartbeat—
soft cinnamon light
through mother’s skin.
And I will only come to understand the quiet
when I return to the mother of mothers,
and people call me
by the first sound I ever made.
Cinnamon light. Goddamn, son.
My god, this is fabulous!