What still remains that can be said
About the boy without a head?
Where thoughts should bloom, silence instead —
No worries could upset him.
He'd never heard a hateful word.
Expressions left him undeterred.
No thoughts would come out mean or slurred,
No reason to regret them.
No hat to fit, no hair to groom,
No voice for silence to subsume.
Yet in this lack, he found no doom,
Nor felt himself the lesser.
But love and fear, pride and disdain,
All locked within his absent brain,
To try to share would be in vain,
Save for a clumsy gesture.
No smile to beam, no lips to kiss,
His hugs would always land amiss.
He couldn't even aim his piss,
—to everybody's anger.
A scent could stir no memory,
No taste of sweet or savoury.
His mind, a void and empty sea,
A still and listless languor.
And then, of course, the lovers' call
That touches humans, one and all,
Could only ever hit a wall —
His heart unkissed and vowless.
He cannot laugh, he cannot sing,
Nor grasp the joys that life can bring.
Of nothingness, he reigns as king,
Both hollowed out and crownless.
So here it stands, my solemn case
Against the boy without a trace
Of hatred's sting, or love's embrace —
No life, no soul, no virtue.
This lonesome life, this hungry pain.
That aching note that still remains.
The “rest” we hope our deaths contain
Is sweet—but deeply untrue.