I’m disassembling piece by piece...
deteriorating, decayed, decreased.
If you’re here, retrieve me.
They checked my flesh,
they checked my heart,
they can’t detect my faulty parts.
But they say you’ll heal me...
...can you heal me?
I plug my ear, bash my fist.
I need some proof that you exist,
that you can reach me.
Can you reach me
now that you bent the bars of the cage,
scraping skin, draining age,
out of view, out of range,
out where no hope remains?
I need your name, Karuna...
When my nerve wore down,
I was assailed by simple little sounds:
hammer clangs, sirens in the park,
like I never heard New York.
Blaring brakes, trapped trucks
honking horns, hissing buses stuck,
shrieking trains barreling berserk,
like I never heard New York.
When the room grew loud,
I learned to stand in back, behind the crowd,
dam canals with cork,
like I never heard New York.
But when the walls gave way,
I had to flee, I had to back away
as the whole town barked,
like I never heard New York.
I’m listening for you, Silence,
but god, there’s so much noise.
And now I fear I’ve found you,
you’re partially destroyed.
I echo in your absence,
voiceless as a swan.
I want you to hear what I hear,
This sound that I found
to replace you while you were gone,
gone beyond...
With folded legs you hold me,
and smiling, calmly mime,
“You worry nothing’s happening,
you’re happening all the time!
So shaken by these changes,
but trying to waltz along...
I want you to hear what I hear:
A tempo, ticking away, beating bygone,
gone beyond...”
Our bodies are temporary, let it be known:
from the start, we start to lose them.
Depreciating vehicles stuck under snow,
shoveled out without illusion.
Try to breathe like you breathed
on your very first try,
like you’re filling you up
with an ample supply for goodbye...
Our bodies are temporary, let it be shown
thru summer evening fading daylight:
violet tissue, into flesh,
into bone, into dust,
into brightest, blackest midnight.
Try to see like you’ll see
at your very last light,
like you’re watching a flood
from a comfortable height for goodnight...
Try to breathe like you breathed
on your very first try,
like you’re filling you up
with an ample supply for goodbye...
Time is all we have.
I hope I have enough,
enough to show you love
before my time is up.
Before you wake the dead,
take a pause,
instead of deafening nonsense, share silence.
No violence today.
No violence,
no violence,
no violence today.
Like driving with the window down,
all of this will disappear.
I only have you now, you only have me here.
And we can’t count on tomorrow night,
or wait for brighter light.
I can hear you thru my eyelids,
chère Silence.
No violence today...
No violence,
no violence,
no violence today.