My first entry...

I'll start off so you don't have to be shy. If I can write this junk in moments, you can do so much more.

Silence can never speak
against the wails and shrieks of a nation.
Crickets and crocuses protest blood for oil,
pigeons sing like waterboarded prisoners.

Silence is never heard
above the rage of heaving engines,
below the whirr of policing propellers,
atop a deteriorating concrete slab of pattering feet.

Silence will never be known
amongst clinging beer bottles and toasting wine chalices,
nor the hands that smash them onto a broken sidewalk,
nor the squawking Sunday voice boxes at a pulpit.

But silence bounces off the walls of this crowded room.
Silence screams at me above an electronic trance.
Silence hisses in my ear,
because I am the only one willing to listen.

-Shelly Storm