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Sep 2016
Imagine an overused sickroom,
an army hospital in a war zone:
the reek of sulfur and saltpeter overpowering sweet rotting meat,
a periodic shocking light of casual bombardment
reveals brass colored walls.
And, and, and ...
the noisesβ€”too many to catalogue
or differentiate.

A fever feels better,
opening a dream flowerβ€”
transfiguration follows death, we know this,
now. We know colors, liquid figures
so familiar somehow.  
Isn't dying a familiar act?

The nurse laving ice water
on my puckered brow should excite me
(bedraggled, blood-smudged,
her hair loose, lips slightly parted
from fatigue or an indisguisible loathing for decay).
Think:  in this given moment
five billion people are doing something else.
Even those also dying are dying in a different way
without ice water.
"Quel dommage," you'd  say, Liesl,

making the bed of a morning. "What're the rich folks doing?"
The sun hot and blinding through the east windows
The room so white, the sheets green, your brown eyes
never averted
aromas of grass, exhaust, drying ***
where is it all?
where does it go?
what brings it here
this polluted room
this anti place
this hole where a stomach used to be
resides a memory of a stomach
recalling hunger
as a good thing to be assuaged with pleasure
Nurse, close your mouth before your soul escapes
segment of a long, 'component' poem, meant to remain unfinished and open to later insertions
John Silence
Written by
John Silence  Amsterdam
(Amsterdam)   
375
   --- and naeuta
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