The Sound of Silence

In no way do I consider myself remotely on par with Simon and Garfunkel, but I watched The Graduate tonight and The Sound of Silence features pretty heavily throughout, and whenever I wasn't spacing out on the mindbogglingly perfect imagery of the lyrics I was reminded of a poem I wrote for uni about this time a year ago and I decided to share it with the world. So when the revolution comes, I can now be held just as accountable as the next person for the flooding the internet with sub-standard attempts at creativity. Enjoy!

Empty heads in an
empty room.
Empty hearts,
empty everything

into something else.
Change its name,
its place.
its setting
its own table

upon which it will be
devoured like original sin.
The Original Inconvenience.

“Have an apple my dear,
I’m sure He won’t mind”.
It makes you wonder,
was it green or red?
an apple at all?
something else instead?

A hand grenade
would serve as well;
implications unending.
Famine and death and pestilence and war,
I think someone might’ve mentioned that before.
So one brother kills the other - 
someone else said that too –
and starts this mess
where we live:
to consume.
to fill the aforementioned

empty.

Empty this,
empty that,
into this,
back to that.
Call it a school,
of thoughts
of ships and things,
of hand-me-down
she-loves-me-nots,
of cabbages and
King St Wharf
nineteen-ninety-two:

I wasn’t there;
neither were you.
Took a twenty year sabbatical,
in some western wasteland
whose venom’s potency
lays in latency,
lays in waiting.
Hits you in the twenty-somethings,
right between the ears.
The biggest little city in the middle of here
we are,
the end of the line
the yellow brick road
from Return to Oz,
cracked and broken.
Forgotten.
Lost.
The beauty and wonder,
an hour away.
If you survive the transients
of transport;

Displacement:
neither here nor there;
no set state of being -
state like place,
not situation.
I wonder if this will go on forever,
if I can see it to the end.
Or who will be the end of who:
the hero or the villain,
Because,
after all, which is which?