Prolific poet Sam Silva has published several new chapbooks this year. They are all available on Amazon and include: Two Chapbooks for Winter (print / Kindle) Someone's Minor Apocalypse (Kindle) Selected Later Chapbooks (Kindle) Selected Later Chapbooks Edition 2 (Kindle) Selected Later Chapbooks Edition 3 (Kindle) … [Read more...]
Opium Tales at the End and two more poems by Sam Silva
Narco Trips and Stasis Ugly men not mean as a rule but stunted and demented full of strange patterns that their dreams journey on at night ...some nights, though, are sleepless ...they mutter against a droning TV where the Amazon channel plays abnormal British comedies about people seeking fulfillment through sex and talking about ideas that float around like the … [Read more...]
Blue Heart Jazz: Paintings by Rachel Davis and Poems by Sam Silva
MIDNIGHT CALLS A POEM Midnight calls a poem for empty prayers or empty praise and now I am alone in the shell of the dark after that bored terror of the days ...and soon I will be a bird, a dove, a crow, a dizzy lark in a lullaby meant for the Moon and summer stars and winter snow ...but calling instead for morning just as I always do and a paradise of … [Read more...]
Prayers Made Out of Christmas: Poems
PRAYERS MADE OUT OF CHRISTMAS Bach fugues and silence! That organ within my mind exhales the snapped note toward darkness ...and outside the days lean and wait for snow or drizzle to insulate whatever dreams of Jesus and the Virgin are still seeded in my heart. Every life in three score years or more knows hardship as well as a fleeting joy bade to last … [Read more...]
An Old Near Abandoned Kitchen: Poems
AN OLD NEAR ABANDONED KITCHEN In that crypt where dead thoughts are stashed these classical notes wander my brain and peel off the scents of musty numb and muted pain born of the music of the dead ...a sacrament of crumbs in the drain from water, wine, and crusty bread! SCROOGE The season's first frost! ...tomorrow at dawn. I wait for the cold and wait in … [Read more...]
A Different Inspiration: Poems
A Different Inspiration Flashes of epileptic light induce the brains of the spiritually dead to turn their thoughts from blood-drunk Hades and the muddy rivers of their sleep ...and to inch their eyes somewhat skyward beyond the life of earthen dwellings toward banquet tables which the stars and planets keep ...And this way the Son of Man is born breathing fire … [Read more...]
Carolina Ends in Deep August: Poems
CAROLINA ENDS IN DEEP AUGUST Friends!, how the heat of this day has worn me ...this long eternal summer extended as if without hint of sunset. And the light outside forces retreat toward concave shelters of shadow extended like a cool dark hand ...and shivers and chills irrupt when the heat left over subsides, when the fever within finally falls a … [Read more...]
Where We Got Our Cool: Poems
WHERE WE GOT OUR COOL Jazz within the sky ...gold upon this purple swamp ...this bebop swank of lullaby where angels sell their poetry for that treasure of a girl's sweet thigh thrust upward on the dew and damp where river bank meets lullaby. Oh God!...hot days have left us here to broil until the seasons cool that measure, with an Autumn tear on the face of … [Read more...]
Computer Classical Radio: Four poems
COMPUTER CLASSICAL RADIO Alluvial!...floatation of notes in a river of sound where fingers somewhere dance on a keyboard Nature! Nature! in a watery sight ..in the brain ...in the heart ...such fluids abound as would take me there also on this dark quiet night like computer screens and their dancing light! SHIVERS WITHIN A HOT SEASON un bathed a … [Read more...]
A Stranger’s Education in the Arts: Poems
A STRANGER'S EDUCATION IN THE ARTS A brain with its echoes finds constancy in classical romantic serenade and a mirror in the later centuries' leap into expressionism dancing close to jazz. My pen burned its dull flame in visions of the cinema ...cartoons and characters were the backdrop for my crusty verbal images of nature and the city and with such an … [Read more...]
4 spring poems
Ache Awakening In a moment where the yard explodes in air about infested with sky blue expanse in twigs straining to bud near left over winter mud and cars rip by in dense exhaust ...mirrored exhalation of our chants. April's murder on the way ...there is a cost for such sudden exuberance of days which grow quite warm. I am an elf on this Spring day! I am a … [Read more...]
Five poems by Sam Silva
MUSICAL STILL LIFE WITH COMPUTER Guitar serenade ...the plucked harp of my soul lingers as well in the cave I made of my heart with its hole echoing through computer wires with their flickering lights like electric fires. WHAT SAY YOU COUNTRY BOY? Bland things now! Bland and dull and easy! The painless ardor of a mind entombed by cigarettes and old … [Read more...]
A Song Which the Artist Inspires: Poems
A SONG WHICH THE ARTIST INSPIRES Angel of my thoughts and dreams! Painter of my dusty soul in earthen portrait. Fire around the darkened coal lit alive by such desire. Love like this comes only once! No one else could take me there except for Jesus and his mother come with images that likewise strike me dumb among the words I write ...not even Helen with her … [Read more...]
The Light Within the Darkness and two more poems
The Light Within the Darkness Chagall's celebrant Russian folklore foreshadowed somehow the deeper sadder island serenity of your dazzling palms which radiate tears and your portraits of tiny upper class Dominican girls decked in regalia for some ten year old coming out with harsh eyes that stare at the nothingness there. All the wedding, the carnival, the … [Read more...]
Four poems by Sam Silva
WHEN THE POET SEES These facts appear like magic! Those abstract birds you made with wild paint on a tropical canvass seem to my failing eyes now a nocturne where such colors still keep swirling pure. Such a painting frames the world above my desktop next to shadow and lamp glow ...idea and image fall this way suffuse with the patterned chaos of life my bony … [Read more...]
In a Time Under Morning’s Spell: Poems
NATURE Darkness or a flickering computer light within are usually a good shield from mental marauders when the fruit is peeled to the fruit's cold core. And the world is molten ash with a warm thin crust hurtling through a huge cold vacuum and a little stellar dust which the artists choose to kiss. And a song makes sense to the serious aesthete in terms of … [Read more...]
7 new poems by Sam Silva
MY FRIENDS AND I, WE STOLE THE SUMMER My friends and I, we stole the summer and its rain in stumbling secret conversation about the brilliant ways of the city ...all of its joy and all of its pain! In a little room I call my friends and speak of a journey which never ends while they all disappear one by one ...and I may be left ...ah what a Pity! to share … [Read more...]
What the Lower Mind Discerns
Computer music from within ...matched in its expressive rhythm by the rattling tin! One of the coolest days in July helps the feelings on toward Autumn's endless sky and leaf and breeze come soon ...a witch of a morning moments before August! ...with classical computer lullaby nearby that porch and screen waiting for the haunting of the Moon months away on the … [Read more...]
Pagan Days
Prayers are face down and descend in stoic gloom ...what goes up is methane and all of the other various fume and gas which punctuate a tired pain made of a planets sheer exhaust while glaciers cause the plants to bloom like ice cubes melting in a glass near the bed where I lie down ...a victim!, and a ghoulish clown. … [Read more...]
Histories of a Small Southern Town / What Happens With Our Greed
HISTORIES OF A SMALL SOUTHERN TOWN Like those young and ardent tragedies which surround ...summer will come and burn with its fury about this small city built on a swamp. It will come and the steam will rise like passion though such bones ache with enormous fatigue. Then August will retire to September where both Moon and Sun spin orange and huge about the … [Read more...]
Summer’s Onslaught Edging Into May
Summer's onslaught edging into May bakes this swampy yard. Iced coffee levels out the day outside and the guest room has a bed and fan cool as petals on the water ...the mind is groggy old...it's true but no matter what they say about the sky outside the sky outside is perfect blue and a vision of the window melts away as cool cool feelings slide into their … [Read more...]
5 Poems by Sam Silva
A STORY OF GLACIAL WATERS You are a little older than me in years if not in heart. And if you, in the final cup you drink cause the trees and the clouds and the sun to sink I will know again what I really think ...the painful ugly cold of my soul and the withering of trees and the terror of storm and a winter place as dark as coal near frigid seas under snows … [Read more...]
The End of the World Through a Fish Bowl
In summer time I am an air conditioned icicle ...in winter, the steam which haunts the house. I will not go into the grocery store with you Rachel ...I will ride along in the car and be a witness to the distant terror of the world. Images pass along through glass much like the traffic of TV ...but I have lost the courage and strength to go inside and dance around … [Read more...]
Long Before the Peaceful Song: Poems
Long Before the Peaceful Song Sick in the dark before dawn irrupts shedding light on the need to sleep the dead like me pondering their being against that sole thing unforgiven. There is nothing to hold onto here ..a cigarette!, an empty tear! Those petals of an ugly night which bears no witness to the light. Hell As an Institution Bad faith! The dark … [Read more...]
For the Woman Who Keeps My Forever
We struggle to appear as golden embers gone beyond days of the christchild drawing near when we get old...winter nights and brittle cold drowsy days and melting ice Februaries' left over lights ...the dusty tree! ...the old TV! ...the ornaments for rats and mice; an old man trying hard to pee worries about a winter fall ...the slippery fracture of it all! A … [Read more...]
4 poems by Sam Silva
BLISS Mindless piano trills from the online station ...bright lights!, they might flicker to a migraine while a mind on the other side of me desires something else of the near to swallowed pain medication ...peace and pleasure!...the stalwarts of the sixties! ...what survives if anything of a long ago burned out generation of values seeking to kiss the sky in a … [Read more...]
Once As a Child and Long Ago: seven poems by Sam Silva
Once As a Child and Long Ago Once as a child and long ago I was in love with the idea of junk with Peter Pan and Cheerios and the sacred high of the great TV and blue songs which Bob Dylan sang ...the morning! Mr tambourine ...to be lost beyond such hollowness and cold in places wet with smoke in tropic places sweated clean like Juarez is in Mexico ...a … [Read more...]
Things Happen and three other poems by Sam Silva
THINGS HAPPEN Thank God these days I sleep and dream! Things happen ...it is inevitable!, this angry wrangling of the nerves in a place that feels like Hell or a paranoid respite full of anxious passion which can die down to a calm. And there are a few good memories too ...just a sponge balm for all terrors wounds. These things do not strengthen you! unless … [Read more...]
