Violence without Sound

With eyes hardly open, I watch a video
of a man cooking but sans the sound.

Knife drumming on the chopping board,
bacon screaming as it skates
onto the preheated cast iron pan,
I can hear but with my eyes.

Everyone in the house is asleep as the hour
is a pleasure I steal from the world.

It is past midnight, and before
the second Christmas of a Pandemic,
and after a typhoon knocked homes
as you would chess pieces off the table crossly.

Typhoon Rai pelted rooftops with boats,
spent what people saved all their limited lives.

Reporters reach the islands,
peel the horror for cameras,
a man standing in front of shambles
that was a home makes an unearthly
growl I can hear without the audio.

In the hour I stole from the world,
there is only the cheer of crickets,
the clink of ice against the whiskey glass,
a street away, a rough-voiced dog queries
someone walking home hours too late.

These my ears can pick up, with these,
I lean back and close my eyes,
and bring the volume all the way up.