mmmdcccxxi

The Endless Cycle of White Noise

aging strong, at its highest speed,
because i can better function
with the din of white noise,
whether awake or asleep
or attempting to find my way
to one state or the other. as long
as the noise is at least as indecipherable,
as avocal or as non-verbal, as radio or
television static without a station in the world
coming and/or going. these small machines,
the three fans and the air purifier, are
almost always on, although, once in a
while, say every three or four months,
but that depends, i flip one or more of
the dials to off in order to allow for a
more exaggerated silence. radio
silence. so that i may hear the “noises”
in my head (let’s call them thoughts),
which have been accumulating over time.
the white noises stopper them,
keeping them muffled for a duration
until they become unmanageable.
this tactic works. the noises in my
head do not divert my focus,
almost never. they do not
become a distraction.  this
cacophony of various noises 
which can be separated into
stacks, into types (i cannot but
help to do that if and when made aware of them)....
so, inevitably this clamor fills my head
to a point at which it must,
of course, be drained, swollen
as my head becomes. my friends,
when i had any, found this telling.
maybe they understood my feelings
about intelligence. maybe not.
‘intelligence’ is a generic example
of what lies in the head, however.
and this cacophanous pile-up
dulls whatever smarts i believed that
i had, makes much more difficult the
very act of differentiating, of existing
in some sort of normalcy (at least one
that normal folks might suggest is so;
so much is relative, so normalcy, while

theoretically calculable, is difficult to pinpoint).
and so, once the switches have been
turned off, the excess noises semi
identified, and at first put thematically together
to note for further evaluation at some probably
distant point, and drained, then the three
fans and the air purifier, those mechanisms
that fill a tiny home consistently with inert
(untranslatable, indecipherable)
sounds, my precious white noise,
this motley crew of more distracting
and, oftentimes, disturbing noises can
then be dealt with,
which means they then begin
to slowly make their way
down my insides. they
get filtered as they
make their way through
my throat and my left heart
until one by one, group by
categorized group, they
dissipate, evaporate, 

and finally extinguish themselves 

as they make their ways individually
down (the muffling white noise having
kept them stoppered in my head and
“inaudible” enough, for a time, but
inevitably there are too many of
them that accumulate, and
they have to be dealt with,
let go), so that by the time
all of these distracting jumbled
clumps have reached somewhere
around my knees, i am free of this
cacophony, and each buzz-whimpering

thought is free of me. once drained
of them, the switches of each fan
and of the air filter can be flipped

back on so that my momentarily empty 

head is therefore stoppered, and the hubbub
of distracting noises can
begin to accumulate once

again, without diverting
my focus, until
it is time to
drain and filter,
to cycle out these
“noises” once again.