The first thing you saw
was the last thing you heard
Blocks to build a life upon,
confessions in a word
Increments of memory, cell by precious cell
We tell familiar stories
trying hard to understand
How time is all interpretation
Blurring common lines of thought
We carefully craft a life
With all that we’ve been told
Pearls of wisdom for the blind
We hunger for our sight
To see beyond illusion,
free us from this prison of the mind
Quenching quotients of our thirst
Like Jenga blocks so firm at first
Creating towers in a game
we playfully destroy
Yet on a massive scale, we fail
Someone always loses
A fate we cannot recognize
Until somebody chooses

One wrong word and wars begin
And in a flash, the peasants burn
Kingdoms lay in waste
The taste for death acquired, yes?
In haste, we fan the flames
Mischief rules the reign of fools,
a king without a name
Only ghosts to mourn the dead
A crown to hold a heavy head
Is a thousand years enough to bring
Ten billion to their doom?
When nothing is the sum of nothing
And everything is gone…
Does silence reign supreme at last
when all is said and done?

Do you remember? Did you hear?
How it made you climb the walls?
You longed for love to fill the void
Before your kingdom was destroyed
The time you spent alone ended
when she said (hello)
The end of time, a sound you heard,
Existence will expire…
If this be your beginning,
will you label me a liar?
A heavenly escape from all
The gray tones you desired
Yet, fools acquire exactly what
Their misery requires
Placating the uninspired
Keeping people entertained
In increments of time
A line on the horizon
or a whisper to a scream

The first thing they saw
was the last thing they heard
The dream begins the way it ends
For the sound of silence is an anomaly
The same as notes so slyly bend
Opening or closing doors
Did she just arrive, or did he leave?
A metaphor we’ve heard before
Listen how it goes…
The car went flying down the road
Song blaring out the window
Tortured lyrics twisting, melting
Melodies and frequencies
And at the center point of hearing
You watched it raging out of sight
The song went crashing into silence
And so it goes, and so it goes
Between the lines of fractured time
Points of life and death
Beginning with a slap, through violence, drawing sacred breaths
Crying to a universe, tears of light
and dark regrets

How soon we do forget those screams
That filled the empty room
A prayer into the ages
or a book of scattered pages
Did the story sound the same?
Another planet up in flames?
Their time had ended. Spent. Departed
Chapters, verses, questions why
Love-struck poets standing by
Creating lifetimes on the fly
Reborn into a gods of wonder,
Fastened to the sky
The word appeared without a form
Freeing angels from their cages
A consequence of circumstance
No hands to write it down
No ears to hear to make things clear
From darkness into light
A big bang theory yes no maybe?
A soft reprieve to ease your fears
From several hundred billion years

The first thing we heard
was the last thing we saw
A multitude of ancient sounds
Passed down from time to time
A note you wrote in blood
Arriving as a messenger
A singular expression
Confessions in a word
To compensate for love’s secession
Faces in the heavens, yes,
When every cloud looked just like you shifting to my memory,
Shapes of things that never came
I’m lying on my back,
looking at the scattered sky
Sunbeams in my eyes,
Summer bugs about my head
A green grass carpet for our bed,
You enchanted, by my side

The first thing I saw
as the last thing that I heard
You walking away…hello…goodbye, time expands, and then divides
To where our sorrows now reside,
Between two lines…from A to Z
Yes, time compresses in between
Existing as a point of reference
We play these games to win
The tower falls, we start again
Block by block, we so destroy
Increments of pain and joy
Sadness sinking into seconds
Madness melts in manic minutes
Happiness pursued by instinct
The days fall into other lifetimes

The first thing you saw
was the last thing you heard
A child is born within nine months
One hundred years, and then we’re gone
And what did he hear? And what did she see?
Angels dressed in white?
Sinking into blackest night?
Time began and ended there,
innocently enough
Writing obituaries for the living,
Appologies for our misgivings
Wedding invitations
Treaties between nations
Goodbye letters taped to doors
The cycle repeats again and once again… It began with a question
and ended with tears
It began with a word
and ended with a scream
Did the world as we knew it
begin with a bang
The end of our time…
and what was the sound?
Planets in chaos…
castles in sand
Jenga blocks logic
We fall as we fail

Did it start with a word
spoken into existence?
By a divine poet describing a new world
Full of beauty, magnificent nature
A garden of children who never could listen
How could they ever appreciate time?
And know of the sound once it
was no more?
Just as time begins, it expands and constricts
Maybe ends with a bang
or a whisper or shout
Do you know this story?
Have you heard the sound?
For the sound at the end of time
will not be silence
The end of time, will come in violence
And the sound will be a collective sigh
Of ten billion people realizing
They are spirits
Finally free from the bondage
of a perceived
Existence

TM DiSarro

©2024 TM DiSarro / MindScapes Publishing

For a prompt by: The Pretty Provocative Poet

TM DiSarro
©2024 TM DiSarro / MindScapes Publishing
For a prompt by: The Pretty Provocative Poet on Instagram

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