Maybe it stops the screaming in his head,
Maybe it shows his mind is busy spooling Time
To back before his father broke his mother’s nose
To wind things tight and leave no room
For confrontation or the need to make decisions.
Or maybe it’s not screaming, but the absence of all sound,
The fearful silence where the laughter was,
When all difficulty’s drowned out by the warmth of their guffaws,
Feeding off the energy of everyone’s attention
In the internal realm of makebelieve where that’ll do instead of love.
Or maybe the constant flashes of pure panic in his eyes
Simply mean these days that the outside surrounding world’s
Grown so filmed and blurry with the weight of consequence
All he can do is flip his gaze and peer at what’s inside
Echo-locating futures charging roaring at another unlocked door
Into another empty, dusty room, its brown/green paint still flaking,
The only noise the hum of dodging molecules binding through sheer boredom.
Which maybe makes him perfect, in this most terrible of times,
To lead our Sovereign Vegetative State,
A country in a cack-handedly induced coma, strapped in yet more silence
Softly interrupted solely by the crass, regular pings of some machines
While the rest of us are butterflies, batting neverendingly
Against the gridded glass visages of an infinity
Of Diving Bells.