What price silence?

What price silence

Sometimes
Silence... 
is
the answer best
unmade

Chrome reflects
light
not the shadow
worlds and words
of images on the page
there!
within the mind of the reader
truth and denial
lies and fantasies
truths and pains

Do you hear the words?
Moment to moment 
trace to trace
circuits made
links broken
packets lost

large caliber lies
versus
high velocity truth
versus
perceptions as usual
versus
internetainment at any price
versus
the petty jab and slice
versus
a fragmentation grenade made of silence

do you laugh 
when your world is unmade?
should you cry?
plot the noise to signal ratio
as the future is
as much the past 
or the present

light staccato laughter 
with as much value 
and impact
as a horizontal retrace
across phosphor coated glass
85 hurts per second

we bleed 
photons of our own darkness
calling it the darkness of others
a sprawl of pain as large as our own heart
                 as shallow as our need
This is how we create meaning.
                 
do we betray our self or another?
do we accept the futility of hope?

To escape from the vacuous
choose meaning
choose pain
choose acceptance

cold logic dictates the truth table
quantum dots of nothing
bound forever 
and not or nand nor
infallibly superimposed
logically interlocked
packet collision

Does the best always win?
Good?
Light?
Truth?

Listen to:
irrationally indexed entries
in a helical strand of nucleic acids 
lies nature has told itself
future generations will laugh and cry

nothing *is* forever
forever is no thing.
words
irrationally indexed letters
traced once across a phosphor page
now fade like chainsawed trees

my voice is stilled 
I listen:
soft breathing
a murmur
another
crying out 
in their sleep

Had I not listened 
I could not have heard.

Sometimes silence is the answer
hardest to obtain
but the most precious of  all

Beware:
What price silence?

* * *

This poem originated as a "response" to the bullying of a friend and fellow writer in the USENET group alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo circa the fall of 2000 C.E The victim of the bully nearly stopped writing... fortunately he did not.

It  appeared as one of my contributions to the alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo anthology 

A recent post by Lara J. Mixon which I heard about from a post by Steven Brust brought back the memories of the 'horrors' of trolldom and the scourge of bullies and their ilk. 

I can't say I've never done anything hurtful...I have and I have *always* regretted it ... especially when I realize I cannot take back the hurt inflicted. 

I also can say I've spent most of my life on the wrong end of the attention of bullies. The hurt the victim feels is always greater than the sorrow and regret the bully might feel if they / were they / when they mend their ways.