Here is what I want to tell people about the ghastly
the grim the macabre the morbid
the grinning skulls we draw on pages
at desks far from fields of skulls set rigid:

You cannot negotiate with silence.
You can only
look at it

however
you like.

There is no sanctity dead or living.
Though, for all of us, I would wish it so
(we never cease in making monuments to swear it is so)
(look at these monuments--
and see it is not).

A natural law requires no belief.

You don’t listen.
I said:
Let go.