I see a boy underneath the bin
He prays desperately to a deaf god
Looming over I can smell his despair
Rocking back and forth in holy existence
Your prayer won’t save you now little duckling
Say I to the rat
But on he chants, on and on to gods and clouds and demons
He names them all, one by one endlessly chanting his desperate canon
Where are your gods now?
Do they serve you a merciful end?
I ask as I slash his throat.

A deaf republic can’t afford
to sit on its hands,

killing its sign language
in willful silence,

letting memory erase
the fear and the truth.

The disease existed.  
The shrouds too.

Concrete does not
pave over the blood.

A stroll in the park
does not tamp the pain.

The Punch and Judy show
is but the pantomime
for the forgetful.

The only sound heard
is the singing of
marionette strings

culled from a pile
of burnt violins.

When the air turns
khaki and violent,
the crowd disperses,

their hands in their pockets
signing and forming words.

In a silent closet at home,
the last parents teach
their children to sign.

The children sign
to the doors, windows,
the grass, the trees, the sky

anything with
the shapes of ears
before ears were banned.

My silent little dear
snoozes in his cradle
beyond the noises
I can no longer hear.

The quiet drip of
rain and sink,
the swoosh of
inside air circulating,
the vibrations of life
I can hear only with
mental captions on,
are the inaudible sway,
that separates you from me.

Can you hear my smile
with closed eyes,
will you love the
silence or the noise?

Will you delight in
birdsongs or  
in fluttering wings?

Will you laugh at
the music of the spheres
or delight in quiet
thoughts and contemplation?


Child of my April dreams
and September haunts
who breathes in the
whitewash walls of my soul,
what you choose to see or hear,
at first walk, I will protect  
under the signing of my hands.


*This is a poem about my looking back at my baby self, before I contracted Scarlet Fever and became  near deaf, wondering what I would choose if I had the option to hear or be deaf.

Flesh sees flesh
Spirit sees spirit
It takes one to see one
But no one's there to hear it

Oh Silence, where are you?
Will I ever hear you again?
I've been looking for you everywhere
- in vain.

I have been to many churches
and quite a few graveyards too,
but you weren't there anymore.
Where are you?

One day you will come to see me
and you'll  lay your hand on my head.
And I won't have to be jealous again
of people, who became deaf.

"You can't hear me!" she whispered,
And I just turned my head.
Sometimes it's better not to hear....
Depends on what's been said.

I know I irritate her;
(I irritate myself).
Hearing aids are waiting
On some hearing doctor's shelf.

While we go on debating,
Because I'm in no hurry,
I sit here contemplating....
Sometimes it's better not to worry.

At the things I heard that peeved me,
Before I tune the wide world out;
Honey, if you really want to catch me,
You're gonna have to shout.

Your thoughts are far from the ground,
Like cumulonimbus clouds thundering by
And pouring rain. 


Life seems to pass by, scattered and wispy 

with the sound of the wind like a whistling train playing
as you stare at the elusive silver lining.

The pit patter of Peter Pan being lost
dwells heavy in your heart,
As you revise the sequence of the cumulus memories.

Life paces
As you ignore the malice and bantering of the crowds
Sticking your head above up into the clouds
half-deaf to reality in the room.

You have a foot in a fairy tale,
And one in the abyss.