The Auditory Grave
by Dawg
Behold the architecture of a dark and greedy plan,
a jagged throat of plaster built to terminate the man.
I watched a woman scream until her lungs began to tear,
but not a single frequency survived the heavy air.
The hallway has an appetite for every human shout,
it sucks the desperation from the center of the mouth.
I stepped into the carpet and I felt the volume die,
a total amputation of the vocalized cry.
The walls are lined with insulation made of skin and lead,
to make sure the living sounds are numbered with the dead.
It’s the silence of the thresher, it’s the vacuum of the hall,
where the echoes go to perish and the plaster starts to crawl.
You can beg for your salvation, you can curse the very light,
but the sound is just a morsel for the gullet of the site.
The wallpaper is weeping with the moisture of the lost,
a tally of the secrets and the heavy verbal cost.
I saw a neighbor pleading as he vanished down the bend,
without a single syllable to signal to a friend.
The ceiling is a lid that keeps the atmospheric pressure tight,
while the carpet drinks the evidence of every frantic fight.
I tried to hum a rhythm just to prove I still exist,
but the melody was strangled by a cold and toneless fist.
I’m clawing at the drywall and I’m biting on my tongue,
watching every frantic breath get stolen from the lung.
The paradox of terror is a shout without a noise,
a total demolition of the rhythmic human poise.
I’ll walk into the center where the darkness is complete,
and feel the heavy nothingness beneath my very feet.
The hallway is a predator that finally found its fill,
leaving only corpses who have learned to be quite still.
Don’t listen for the answer, don’t listen for the plea–
the silence is the only thing that’s left for you and me.