Buzz

(A study in listening)

A numbing, soft, uncomfortable crush,
the white noise of night’s silence
that the brain tricks into an urgent wind,
a balmy tinnitus, a mausoleum
from whence escape is futile,
other than to further hostile desolations.
Alone in my shrinking room,
where even the reassuring monotone tock
is lost amongst this velvet hiss,
or thrust in the heft of the commuting faceless,
still the lumbering drone of spectral noise.
There is no such state as solace, silence, sanctuary,
just the near imperceptible swish of consciousness
from which we writhe, but none can abscond.


© Graham Sherwood 6/2013