When Everyone Has Thrown The Last Stone Poem by RIC BASTASA

it was meant to be read aloud
as it will be as beautiful as it sounds
it was meant to be power
the beauty that is found in thunder
but i purposely desist you
as i detest what you want me to become
and so i read it silently as though i have
denied myself that power that lies in
my teeth and tongue
i prefer it this way, slow, dragging,
soundless, for i have taken the cudgel
of the deaf and mute and it will be for
years, and years, and you will be mad,
as you want to know me only in words,
in the loudness of my being,
i have chosen what shall destroy you
this silence, the way we watch how
funerals initiate themselves till the
end when everyone has thrown the last
stone, and then the covering begins,
just like the way how it should end.