Soundproof Panels

Soundproof Panels

(“To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.” Jeremiah 6:10)

I know you gave yourself over to ghosts
many years ago. Finally, most of them escaped outside,
but a few remained within. They filled your ears with
consequential thievery. They blocked them from any
scenery that might change your mind and make you ache
for better paragraphs to enter your head.

And why did you swallow those stones that stopped halfway
down your digestive tract to take the place of you heart?
When did you decide to replace your eyes with gray and black
kaleidoscopes.?

You used to sing “Be Thou My Vision” from memory:

    Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise.
    Thou mine inheritance, now and always;
    Thou and Thou only first in my heart.
    High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

But today you sing a different tune so out of key, so under
spooned. You’ve kept up the masquerade so well that
people still throng to hear your catchphrase wisdom. No one
leaves
without dropping a ten on the box at the front of your door.

What can god say that would turn you round. What could
any of us do to open the blockage of your ears? When did it
seem so right to declare God as “only first in my heart”
while you deny the very song that sets free.

I remember your eyes, ages ago, bright with pleasure at the
thought that god was at work in the world. Now he recruits
you and all is stone and soundproof panels shut up against the
chambers of your heart.