The day I realised
that somewhere down the line
we’re all a little deaf
was the day I figured out
that the apocalypse on this Godforsaken earth
will not happen because of zombies-
It will happen because we
did not listen to each other enough.
Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to my one-time one-edition-only
open challenge
to all the citizens of the modern world
otherwise known as
the incredibly interesting
social phenomenon
of the communication breakdown.
Wait a minute.
None of you signed up for this, did you?
Ah well, never mind, I didn’t mean any of that anyway,
That was just to get your attention at the start,
and because it’s important
to observe the formalities
when you’re going to be telling people things
they could hear-
if they wanted to.
Scene One.
There is a screeching scream
on a moonlit night
with silvery waters lapping
at a dark gold shore.
You shoot a deer.
Afterward,
there is calmness,
roast meat,
and the flash-flash-flash of the blue tipped cigarette
you hold negligently in your hand.
(Listen. You can hear it.)
Congratulations.
You have just completed the first step
of truly being human.
Scene Two.
In silent seas bewitched to starry skies,
not a mouse stirring,
there are soft plops in the darkness
as half-naked men hack at whales,
blood running down to the shallows
in a giant red question mark.
The men pause for an instant
to look at the scarlet on their hands, then-
stab downward.
There are screams.
Listen. You can hear them.
Scene Three.
By the light of the neon gods we worship
on a night as black as ink,
there are howls and roars in the dark
that gradually turn
to subhuman st-st-stuttering and m-m-muttering
which in turn give way
to high pitched hysterical screams
as your laboratory monkeys
are shocked, burnt, frozen, clamped, grafted, irradiated,
put in straitjackets
and forced to have electrodes planted in their brains.
Now they see the world
as the great joke
it truly is.
(That is the sound of their laughter.
Listen. You can hear it.)
Of course, none of these could speak,
and hence were not
suitably advanced, rational, sentient beings,
but how many of us can speak, I wonder,
above this continuous confusing
clamorous chattermatter
that clouds our lives
full of not understanding our own selves
and of daily threatening each other
with the same weapons?
This is a world taken by bloodlust
dancing to the totem beats of petty strife,
Death dropping from the skies,
Delirium dancing through the streets,
Doom, despair, and near-total annihilation
chasing each other round and round,
round and round,
like greyhounds escaped from Hell-
This is a savage place.
We’ve all got a ‘war on our mind’,
we play games with green gas and with red fire
inside of our heads
and then we translate that to the world outside-
huge victories,
with no one left living.
Sure, it’d be a brilliant way to go
with a blue missile streaking across the sky
lighting it up,
innocents raped with napalm fire
screaming for more,
the Earth breathing in fast thick pants
as heave upon heave
of hot nuclear warload
was pressed into her soft, quivering flesh.
There’s just one problem.
You see,
we’d all be dead.
And that
is the sound of your
heart
beat
slowing
to
a
murmur.
Listen. You can hear it.
Like all big problems,
this leads to an associated small problem-
There is a fate worse than Death.
In five more years
we could be Whatsapping
our significant other
“Good afternoon, dear”
when they are sitting in the room
directly opposite us.
Some of us, in fact,
already do.
Then there’s a problem that I call
the problem of the “mm-hmms”.
The problem of the “mm-hmms”
is when you’re not really listening to something,
you’re only pretending to,
so you look downward and make a sound
from the centre of your nosepit
that goes- “Mmhmm.”
And that, in case you didn’t know it,
can lead to serious problems.
Attend closely.
“I bought a new watch yesterday.”
“Mmhmm, that’s nice.”
“My parents have started fighting again.”
“Mmhmm, that’s good.”
“My grandmother passed away yesterday.”
“Mmhmm, that’s good to hear.”
“I fucked your girlfriend this morning.”
“Mmhmm, excellent!”
Yeah, that’s not the problem.
The problem is,
when someone asks,
“Pardon me, Mr. President, does your country possess
nuclear weapons of mass destruction?”
“Mmhmm.”
Next thing you know,
you’re being bombed by the United States of America,
and you don’t know why
because you don’t know what you said.
All of this
starts from the little things-
the nightingales who thrust at thorns to bleed their lives into you,
the bonfires who quenched themselves to feed your flame,
the comedians who sold their existence to the Devil
to buy you yours.
In the abyss they found you,
they took you by the hand,
to higher paths they led you,
then, in the glinting summer sun,
like Apollo’s mailcar of the morning
“I have to get out, I have to get out, I have to get out”-
BAM.
You ran your chariot wheels over them.
Albatross shooting is a fine game.
Listen. You can hear it.
There are strange sounds those people make
at four and five and six o’clock
when they turn reeling
from the refrigerator with a bottle in their hands,
laughing a little,
the things that fall from their wrists hiss
like rivers of flowing veins,
and then they turn on the radio
which sings
“Smile, what’s the use of crying,
You’ll find life is still worthwhile
if you just smile”
and there’s a soft snick
as smiling slowly,
they slit their wrists to death.
(Listen. You can hear it.)
In the past month alone,
Fifteen people died in Calcutta, India,
leaving behind notes saying
they felt alienated
because no one would listen to them.
You will not hear the world when it would be heard by you,
has to be heard by you,
“Please hear me, Please hear me, Please hear me”-
This is the sound the world makes
as it tears against fences,
drags down windows,
hurls at bars,
begging to be seen,
crying to be heard-
You will not hear it.
There are bored yawns
from people without a problem,
and people concerned
about their scholarships and diplomas
and the intricate details of their exceedingly complicated
lust- sorry, love- lives.
There is the indifference of everybody around you
and then,
there is your silence.
You think the world is at your command?
It’s creeping up behind you with an axe as big as Doom
and, baby, there’s a countdown happening.
Listen.
You can hear it.
that somewhere down the line
we’re all a little deaf
was the day I figured out
that the apocalypse on this Godforsaken earth
will not happen because of zombies-
It will happen because we
did not listen to each other enough.
Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to my one-time one-edition-only
open challenge
to all the citizens of the modern world
otherwise known as
the incredibly interesting
social phenomenon
of the communication breakdown.
Wait a minute.
None of you signed up for this, did you?
Ah well, never mind, I didn’t mean any of that anyway,
That was just to get your attention at the start,
and because it’s important
to observe the formalities
when you’re going to be telling people things
they could hear-
if they wanted to.
Scene One.
There is a screeching scream
on a moonlit night
with silvery waters lapping
at a dark gold shore.
You shoot a deer.
Afterward,
there is calmness,
roast meat,
and the flash-flash-flash of the blue tipped cigarette
you hold negligently in your hand.
(Listen. You can hear it.)
Congratulations.
You have just completed the first step
of truly being human.
Scene Two.
In silent seas bewitched to starry skies,
not a mouse stirring,
there are soft plops in the darkness
as half-naked men hack at whales,
blood running down to the shallows
in a giant red question mark.
The men pause for an instant
to look at the scarlet on their hands, then-
stab downward.
There are screams.
Listen. You can hear them.
Scene Three.
By the light of the neon gods we worship
on a night as black as ink,
there are howls and roars in the dark
that gradually turn
to subhuman st-st-stuttering and m-m-muttering
which in turn give way
to high pitched hysterical screams
as your laboratory monkeys
are shocked, burnt, frozen, clamped, grafted, irradiated,
put in straitjackets
and forced to have electrodes planted in their brains.
Now they see the world
as the great joke
it truly is.
(That is the sound of their laughter.
Listen. You can hear it.)
Of course, none of these could speak,
and hence were not
suitably advanced, rational, sentient beings,
but how many of us can speak, I wonder,
above this continuous confusing
clamorous chattermatter
that clouds our lives
full of not understanding our own selves
and of daily threatening each other
with the same weapons?
This is a world taken by bloodlust
dancing to the totem beats of petty strife,
Death dropping from the skies,
Delirium dancing through the streets,
Doom, despair, and near-total annihilation
chasing each other round and round,
round and round,
like greyhounds escaped from Hell-
This is a savage place.
We’ve all got a ‘war on our mind’,
we play games with green gas and with red fire
inside of our heads
and then we translate that to the world outside-
huge victories,
with no one left living.
Sure, it’d be a brilliant way to go
with a blue missile streaking across the sky
lighting it up,
innocents raped with napalm fire
screaming for more,
the Earth breathing in fast thick pants
as heave upon heave
of hot nuclear warload
was pressed into her soft, quivering flesh.
There’s just one problem.
You see,
we’d all be dead.
And that
is the sound of your
heart
beat
slowing
to
a
murmur.
Listen. You can hear it.
Like all big problems,
this leads to an associated small problem-
There is a fate worse than Death.
In five more years
we could be Whatsapping
our significant other
“Good afternoon, dear”
when they are sitting in the room
directly opposite us.
Some of us, in fact,
already do.
Then there’s a problem that I call
the problem of the “mm-hmms”.
The problem of the “mm-hmms”
is when you’re not really listening to something,
you’re only pretending to,
so you look downward and make a sound
from the centre of your nosepit
that goes- “Mmhmm.”
And that, in case you didn’t know it,
can lead to serious problems.
Attend closely.
“I bought a new watch yesterday.”
“Mmhmm, that’s nice.”
“My parents have started fighting again.”
“Mmhmm, that’s good.”
“My grandmother passed away yesterday.”
“Mmhmm, that’s good to hear.”
“I fucked your girlfriend this morning.”
“Mmhmm, excellent!”
Yeah, that’s not the problem.
The problem is,
when someone asks,
“Pardon me, Mr. President, does your country possess
nuclear weapons of mass destruction?”
“Mmhmm.”
Next thing you know,
you’re being bombed by the United States of America,
and you don’t know why
because you don’t know what you said.
All of this
starts from the little things-
the nightingales who thrust at thorns to bleed their lives into you,
the bonfires who quenched themselves to feed your flame,
the comedians who sold their existence to the Devil
to buy you yours.
In the abyss they found you,
they took you by the hand,
to higher paths they led you,
then, in the glinting summer sun,
like Apollo’s mailcar of the morning
“I have to get out, I have to get out, I have to get out”-
BAM.
You ran your chariot wheels over them.
Albatross shooting is a fine game.
Listen. You can hear it.
There are strange sounds those people make
at four and five and six o’clock
when they turn reeling
from the refrigerator with a bottle in their hands,
laughing a little,
the things that fall from their wrists hiss
like rivers of flowing veins,
and then they turn on the radio
which sings
“Smile, what’s the use of crying,
You’ll find life is still worthwhile
if you just smile”
and there’s a soft snick
as smiling slowly,
they slit their wrists to death.
(Listen. You can hear it.)
In the past month alone,
Fifteen people died in Calcutta, India,
leaving behind notes saying
they felt alienated
because no one would listen to them.
You will not hear the world when it would be heard by you,
has to be heard by you,
“Please hear me, Please hear me, Please hear me”-
This is the sound the world makes
as it tears against fences,
drags down windows,
hurls at bars,
begging to be seen,
crying to be heard-
You will not hear it.
There are bored yawns
from people without a problem,
and people concerned
about their scholarships and diplomas
and the intricate details of their exceedingly complicated
lust- sorry, love- lives.
There is the indifference of everybody around you
and then,
there is your silence.
You think the world is at your command?
It’s creeping up behind you with an axe as big as Doom
and, baby, there’s a countdown happening.
Listen.
You can hear it.