“Music is a language that doesn’t speak.     
                     in particular words.  It speaks in emotions,
                     and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.” 
                                                                   –      Keith Richards  

Which is louder?  The presence or absence
of sound, of music, of susurrating vibration,
piece against piece seeking balance?

Summer nights, cricket swarms sing Parnassus
from outside—my insides ululation…
beauty was louder.  But presence or absence,

I’m thrumming, wishing we’d somehow been glabrous,
forgotten follicles now seeking connection,
part against part in imbalance,

the rites and the rituals, once sabbaths,
the haints and the haunts of affection.
Which was louder? Your presence or absence

on winter nights, fireplace reenactments
where one tiny insect (an abjection)
was piece without peace and imbalance—

whether wing or appendage, so scabrous,
the tremoring of the body was abstraction…
what is louder? My absence or that presence?

those sheets and that mattress misalliance
of memories meandering dereliction;
part against part, the imbalance:

What you were, what I was, became claxons—
a deafening drought of inflection
which is louder and present in absence
of peace–broken pieces with no balance.