- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Comfortable Silence
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What if it doesn't matter
that there's nothing left
to talk about? Why must
jaws snap like fish for
water and thoughts
long since doomed
flop around in futile
death rattle?
What if I never listened
anyway to what you said,
but leaned in to scout
with stetoscope tuned ears
for a rush of pulse? What if
my eyes don't read gestures,
but stories told by bitten nails?
What if there's silence?
So what if there's silence?
- COMMENTS
KOLKOREover 17 years ago*
Nothing new. He is just not Anon. My appreciation to your poem shoud not be un named (at least as Anon. goes). I hope this time I get it right.
Anonymousover 17 years agoNever buy, I remind myself again, any cover - or a title of a poem for that matter, before checking its content.
But I love being put to the task. I don’t think a comfortable silence is what this poem is all about. Maybe he wished that they had. But from his description of his partner’s talking it sounds like a post mortem to relations which died. You realize that: “thoughts / long since doomed/ flop around in futile/death rattle” are hardly an offer to move into a different style of communication, and: “What if I never listened / anyway to what you said” is not much of an advocacy for a righteous lover.
The silence at the moment may be comfortable or not, but the emotional state the now single narrator seems to be at, comes across as mostly defensiveness (See the basic structure of the poem as an argument). It could be that other feelings, maybe deeper, more painful are yet to surface and be experienced (he noticed her bitten nails, but never listened to her). But not at the moment this poem captures.
I love a poem which “leads you on”, not as a fault, but as part of its artistic design. You don’t read ABOUT the mental processes of the character. You discover them as they are being demonstrated by the short comings of the all too human character.
