Listen

I close my eyes and I can feel the vibrations,
The tenor,
The timbre.
It echoes through me.
It electrifies me.
My heart expands.
I smile.

I reach out of my head,
Into my surrounding world,
And I search for that whisper,
That rustle,
That soft humming,
Because I do not want
(And I cannot have)
Silence in my life.

I hold onto the vibrato.
I copy it.
I memorize it.
I cling to it for dear life.

And then I replicate it.
It’s how I get by.
It’s how I express my thoughts.
I always need more words,
More audible images,
To explain how I feel
And what I think.

And when the sounds fade away,
I will always keep them in my head.
I will find solace in the peaceful mumblings of my soul,
But I will never be truly satisfied.

Spoiler

I feel like people tend to read into this poem a little bit too much. I just want to make clear that I write exactly how I think. I'm not vague, and I hate to beat around the bush. So yeah, you could possibly draw several different interpretations from this poem, but in all honesty, it's stating EXACTLY what I'm thinking. The inspiration was drawn from my fear of losing my hearing in old age. (I'm already half deaf and so I value VERY highly what little I can hear right now.) So I hope that cleared things up, just in case you all were wondering where this seemingly came from.

I liked this poem a lot. Mainly because I really liked the wording and the subject in general. Whenever I need metaphors I go for music like things =]. But anyway, I think the choppy lines work well for the piece actually. It makes the reader try to find a rhythm instead of just giving it to them, but it IS there, which is good. I think that you have a nice piece here =]

Thanks so much for your feedback! Much obliged.

Wow! This is really nice! It seems as if you just poured out words on paper. Although the theme of the poem is kind of cliche, you expressed in a distinct way. I also love the voice. It was solemn and yet compelling, wanting the reader to believe you. I also love the poetic diction. It was self explantory making the imagery of the poem easy to visualise. Nice style, keep it up!

I love this, and I could especially relate to it, too. I don't want to have silence (all the time); I almost always want to have music in my life somewhere. So, I could really relate to this. Great work! Keep it up!

This is so beautiful! I'm such a sucker for anything about music, and you've done such a good job writing how music sounds, which is so difficult. I want to quote my favorite lines, but there are too many. I especially like your use of enjambement--it feels like it's own kind of punctuation, and a lot like music, where everything is connected, but phrases are still very clear.