All These Thinkings in My Noisy Head

In English we wrote journals based on topics or quotes covered in our current book of study. Very rarely do I actually have something worth sharing in them, as I usually just do it for the points, but this last quarter I wrote some things I actually liked.

Our prompt was the concept of silence found in Chaim Potok's The Chosen. As I got to thinking about it, I realized that, truly, there is no such thing as silence. There will always be the slightest noise, simply because we are living, breathing, thinking human beings.

In the most soundproof of rooms, the human ear is capable of hearing a heartbeat and the sound of blood rushing through veins. When the ear has nothing to listen to, it listens in on itself.
Humans are, by nature, noisy creatures. We revel in the roar of a car engine and the drone of our televisions and radios. We like to hear and be heard, to make noise and listen to it. We thrive on the hum of electricity and the patter of rain. Were it not for all this noise, surely we would go insane.
Truly, there is no such thing as silence. We are encased in noisy bodies, always in motion, making noise, making sound, lungs breathing, heart pumping. Perhaps only in death will we feel the embrace of silence, but even then I expect we will listen to the thinkings of our noisy heads racing with thoughts, like a heart pump-pumping lifeblood through neurons like veins.
No, I do not believe in silence. Always I am listening to electricity through copper wire and blood through veins, under breathing and gurgling and humming and rustling, ticking and beating and clicking and creaking and groaning, talking and laughing AND THEN my noisy head filled with so many thoughts. If you take out the talking, is that really silence?
And when I am dead, I should hope that I do not have to listen only to the thinkings my mind thinks. How could I wonder anything when I am all alone? How can I live without a heartbeat-beating a constant rhythm in my ears, pumping blood through my noisy veins?

Do you have a noisy head, too?

The Archives Begin

Since I've been writing poetry since long before I started this blog, I'm going to post older poems as well as new stuff. Here's a little gem from the very beginning of the school year, back when I thought I was good at writing poetry but actually wasn't (as opposed to thinking I'm good at writing poetry and actually being good at it). This was my audition for my high school poetry slam team...

Somehow I managed to make the team.

Anyways, enough gab. Here's the poem.

Silence

Night seeped into my soul long ago,
Dripping poison like immobilizing tar,
Set its cold fingers into my heart and sent me into a stupor.
I know its touch, that hand of death,
That cold and unfeeling pit in my chest,
That open mouth of darkness waiting to swallow me up.
I know all too well how it feels to have my toes resting on the edge of despair,
Gazing into its depths and wanting with all my heart to fall,
To give myself up to the unending depression,
To feel like I was flying only until I hit the bottom,
But only able to cry out “Let it end!
“Take it away!
“Please, please, no more!”
Never having the courage to jump like so many before me,
To let the night control me and take me into its cold, cold arms...
That cruel mother from which I was born and into which I will fall in death.
I was led by the light of neon,
Hand in hand with my dark angel who silenced my cries of fear with frozen fingers,
Taking me down dark alleyways in a city of crumbled hopes and dreams,
Inhabited only by the ones that came before me to rot in this place,
Curled in a fetal position and crying, crying, crying...
Crying for the light that felt might never come.
I struggled to pull my hand from hers, struggled to rip her palm from my mouth and scream
“Let it end!
“Take it away!
“Please, please, no more!”
…
Light came to my being that day,
Spread its wings like a butterfly and brushed the edges of my tattered soul.
For the first time, I felt joy,
My cruel mistress beaten back by the sword of that seraphim,
That golden champion.
The darkness shrieked as it dissolved into day, warmed by the sunlight.
That day lingers, glows from my core and lights the way ahead,
Shoos away the dark things of the night and keeps the fallen angel at bay.
She will not control me,
Nor will she silence me ever again as I say these words out loud for the whole world to hear!
I will not be silenced!