Quietude’s Extinction

The dripping faucet keeps sleep stranded
just shy of its REM shore,
each drop a tiny knuckle tapping
on the hollow door of consciousness.

In the dark, the sound stretches,
thin as a thread of silver wire,
yet strong enough to pull the eyes open.
And in that stillness, the mind wanders
to mountains where silence once camped beside him,
a bivouac night held gently
by a mild wind brushing the pines,
quiet so complete it felt like
a blanket stitched from the breath of the earth.

And outside these walls…

The city awakens long before dawn,
and the first noises arrive like early birds
with steel-throated songs:
the ubiquitous cab horns cracking the morning shell,
a street sweeper grinding its bristles
against the curb as if trying
to sand the world into compliance.
Jackhammers take up their midnight religion,
pounding prayers into concrete;
sirens scrawl red-blue graffiti
across the air’s fragile parchment.

In the next apartment, voices rise and fall,
a domestic storm brewing behind drywall,
while, outside, dogs from distant balconies
clash together in a ragged chorus,
their howls arcing through the street and alleyway
like flares sent up by frantic sentinels.

Down in the subway, silence is a myth,
a story told to children.
On the platforms, voices collide, spark,
and fracture like tectonic plates
grinding through their ancient grudges.
Inside the train cars, the noise swells,
a tide of tempers, anxieties,
and the occasional eruption of laughter
from those wandering the edges
of their own unquiet minds.

Every sound becomes a tremor,
every tremor a warning,
every warning a prophecy
of quietude’s extinction.

Back in bed…

He presses earplugs deep,
locking out the clamor of the outer world,
yet still, the inner one roars.
Memories long repressed rise like specters,
their whispers louder
than any siren or shattering shouts.
In this chamber of muffled reality,
he wonders what waits beyond life’s horizon:
whether death arrives
as the purest silence ever conceived,
or a final, impossible noise
that even the soul cannot sleep through.