What would it be like if
The world thought we were no more?
It would keep on spinning
Round and round on its axis.
Gravity and Inertia don’t change their silly laws
And a single death in the face of a million
Is but the indiscernible batting of an eyelash,
The flap of a bird’s wing before a coming storm
As it escapes the looming clouds into
The open skies beyond
Where the calming breeze cradles the feathers
In an uplift of song and dance

Why do I ask;
Why does anyone?
Because of the way we’re wired:
Inquisition into how many ripples we make
On the pond of eternity;
Who we bounce off of.
What do our echoes sound like?
So many hate the sound their own voice makes when
They converse with it
But what could it mean if
People would love to hear our echoes after we’re gone?
Is this a gnawing insecurity, or
Is this grounded in
The subtle knowing that
We’re not as great as we thought we were;
That we become the defective silicon chip,
Thrown out when the hard drive crashes and
We become outmoded?

Someone’s got to be great
And if not us, then who?
Whose voice do we truly love to hear
When it bounces around in our fleshy ears?
Do we hate to admit it?
Are we jealous that we love it?
Is that why we were driven to silencing it?
Why we are still driven to silencing it?
That still small voice,
The one we listen for when we
Have nowhere else to turn;
When we hear it and hear it, all the while
Our fingers stuffed so far inside that
The earwax is scraped out
Like earthworms of ignorance
When it dawns that this is a pleasant melody,
Muffled through digits and maggots.
And all this time,
we sing our dissonant tune,
Fingers cover our eyelids,
And the manic scream we can’t bear
But tell ourselves is truth—
even though it’s not—
Covers over this whisper we
hate to love and
love to hate.

And
If love is white and hate is black
This voice is what we paint in
Ripples of
Dark and light,
Day and night,
And when the waves wax and wane,
When they hit our ears,
We hear infinite bass and soprano
And the drums shatter as the volume inspires us
Into the obedience we’ve been waiting for
out of love or
A wretched duty
And when that day comes,
Everyone will hear the low and the high
And we will know just how dark the blackness is
And how bright the whiteness is
And what they sound like
And what they mean
And who they really are.