a quiet song with a summary



there is a grind, a scream, a moan, a death rattle, a chair dragged across the floor, a body shoved into a ditch, the crackle of burning flesh, the whine of a television coming on (continuously coming on, all the time, everywhere, never stopping . . . .).

could be the quack of a duck, a gaggle of geese with one speaker, a dentist drill, a cheap printer, a car starting its engine, a thousand cars starting their engines, a million cars, a million trucks, a billion motorcycles, a thousand planes, jets and missiles going off, crash landing, colliding, screeching to a halt, all at the same time.

the sizzle of water next to a plutonium rod just as the backup cooling system fails, the last sound a hermit crab makes as it suffocates in a body coated in crude oil, a stomach on salmonella, the howl of kreutzfeld-jacob disease, HIV victim’s fear amplified, a heart attack, a birth pain, the lid of a casket closing, the Wichita Vortex Sutra sung by allen ginsberg, a monk’s chant, the mind deteriorating in an alzheimer's state, slim picken’s hoot riding an atom bomb to oblivion, a burning cigarette in the swindle of silence.