Cold walls make emptiness hollow
a word becomes a paragraph
but the silence is often worse;
that soft, sobered condemnation.

It grows on you like wilted vines
masking mortar and stoic stones
with a web that pulls at the bones
and antagonizes the spine
into emergency room lines.
‘Twas silence that broke Apollo
and surely I too will follow
beneath all this desolation
with my own frigid narration;
cold walls make emptiness hollow

but they fit the mood of the thing.
So I sit, intensely alone
processing all that I was shown
wearing tragedy like a ring;
the whole of my mind in a sling
thoughts circled like an epitaph
rubbed raw in stone on my behalf.
‘Ouroboros,’ the term scoured
when spoken at the right hour
a word becomes a paragraph.

Poisonous prose sinking inside
deep within the ardent soil
that place where thoughts oft wont to roil
and become greater than they should
louder than the self ever could
spitting out erratic free verse
without pause or time to rehearse
and asking, “repeat after me,”
so you spew disheveled debris…
but the silence is often worse.

A void mirrored is oppressive
a wave that splits the earth and sky
sent upon us to purify
turning the peaceful aggressive
the charitable, possessive.
Nothing is more than stagnation.
It’s more than obliteration.
It is the ego sacrificed
sold out for a zero-sum price
that soft, sobered condemnation.