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 deep device

where icicles form
and tears
….become ice….

THE MANY VIRTUES OF THE DAMNED

Fools know only eyes
that give sweetness or scorn
…the other looks
the artist’s pens devise
are that enigma full of strange power.

I wasted many years
in galleries
glazed by my own tears
which magnify the portraits
on the walls or in the cryptic books
trying to unlock that fire within the sun
as a flower would
when Spring has just begun…!

THE LOVE WHICH THE DULL SNAKE LEARNS

I know a goddess like you, sweet Jesus!,
so sweet and strong and innocent,
and no, she was not my mother

…my mother died broken and cold
laid out naked, like meat on a slab,
and pumped full of morphine for her pain
the same way the church had salved her anguish.

She kept a deadly secret
the same way my lover watches her words
and nurtures the heart and mind of a fool

and paints her thoughts like the stars of the Heavens
like a serpent beneath her feet,

FLOWERS DRUNK WITH PASSION

Art like a prayer!
An illuminated manuscript of art
and music everywhere
written in the blood of Easter
crowned by rosy thorns!

…Oh heart of mine!
your meaning is my kiss of Spring
…your paintings are my wine.

STILLBIRTHS MEANT FOR GOD

A headlong gamete seizes the still egg
…these being thoughts
rather than material form!
…these being emotions in their own
primeval ooze of feeling.

…because
materially
the sky outside rings and roars
with a fighter plane from Pope
…chemical and sick!
…sterile but still remarkably unclean!

I close the window to that world
and cough
from Spring’s cool evocation
of exploding flowers
likewise shut off from me
along with a city’s bleak exhaust

switch on some music from the web
(hopefully quiet and atonal stuff)
and unwind the twin aches of head and gut

…strands of stupid humor
made flat and shiny as polished wax
…pain’s pearl underneath, all gone, I suppose.
An arrogance much too dull to be meant.

And I suppose I could go out and act!
But Spring and its murders inspire the young
…which I am not.
And the source of my care
…this room…this spiritual womb
…this computer light of echoing air
has likewise forgotten
why it is there.