are you there?

listen, i'm going deaf, you can go on without me,
i need to wait out the post-sound cacophony in my ears,
to clear out the sonic clutter,
the finely-braided metal radio chains in my head, you know -

it's soothing, the sound of silence, it's bliss, that rich, negative space -

you go on ahead, and after the war,
the ringing detonations,
and the harmonic riots,
after the static on my tv is carefully rearranged
grain by grain into a colorless frame of the past,
a pointillistic polaroid,
maybe i'll catch up, that is,
if i can somehow hear the world again