Omerta

thankyou! it works so very very well.

to not speak of things that, if spoken about, will bring more pain to the arena is a sort of code of honour - but bearing that weight hurts too, and the silence created weighs heavy...

'anneal' absolutely works for me here, friday, as i am reading with the connotations of it being a process that changes the structure of a thing, relieves tensions, makes something stronger, more able to bear pressure...

squench is brilliant, imo - it sounds wet yet tightly restricted at the same time, a careful, contained extinguishing.... makes me think of a heart, too, being gripped tight.

yeah, the "it's" thing... you're so gonna have to bow on this one, dude ;)

Which I love. I see it as a howl of existential anxiety, the fear that somehow we'll be sucked into the silence and dissappear, but that is probably just me.

Yes, I feel that it is a complete poem. I've written earlier "barely" by inertia perhaps. And, in the short version, ending on the word "silence", I like this poem.

I must confess that I didn't take into account the title of the poem in my previous comment. Together with the title I'd say that indeed, it is a whole poem--just barely. I would remove the "cosmetic" part though. It doesn't add anything essential, while so many extra words are tiring. The shorter version would be much stronger, much better. Especially, that this poem is about the silence.

Occasionally, 3-4 words may form a complete poem. Here the 4 lines don't. The whole poem is contained in its initial part:

"Put the radio on—anything

to shut up the silence"

The rest is cosmetic. We've got a poetic phrase, but not a whole poem.

You seem to succinctly express the need we often feel for sounds, such as the radio (or TV) to mask silence.

I can go along with issues in other remarks about word choice:

- annealing seems a bit out of place

- I did find a definition for squench, essentially a synonym for quench. Do like its sound. And I can see quench going along with anneal, as often a part of the process with metals like brass.

The title puzzles me - I find it referring to Sicilian code of (perhaps criminal) honor.

ll in all, I enjoyed it, though.

Nothing wrong with a made up word if it does the trick unless it happens to be a typo perhaps it's a cross between quench and squelch. All in all it makes me think of a silent scream for help that nobody hears

It's amazing how many people get that wrong. Even people as talented as Fridayam.

There's no such word as squench, either. Squelch would fit.

I still like the poem. Hope the criticism isn't unwelcome.

Poet Guy thinks both occurrences of "it's" should be "its."

It is strange if a comment exceeds the length of the poem. The choice of the word "anneal" as a verb is interesting. It means to heat an object and then let it cool slowly. As an adjective, it usually refers to the smooth surface left by the process.