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 strength is tired ambivalence
conditioned not to care.

And after the restful peace
at the end of such a cycle

we tend to fall asleep.
I remember this calming utterance
“I will be glad
when this is over.”

THE GIFT OF OUR FORGETTING

In Winter
I shiver with a dull electric silence
…lights that flash in rhythm
…computer music…e-cigarette run out
while the public TV station
comes to flash the image mute
of external snows
in a ballet wonderland
…mute and into those neutral dreams
of the idiot unconscious
…old narcissistic pig
dancing likewise for a pagan art.

The Christmases of age these days
so full of dulled and dreamy cheer
rum, candy, pretzels, beer

…the gift of our forgetting
the gift of our forgotten past

the tonnage of a rotten mass
…the pedophile!…the leer!

A NATURAL CRUCIFIXION

Beyond the creaking doors
warming breezes charm the yard.

Approaching Spring, bees buzz
around the pill drunk head
…emblems of the nearly dead
exposed that way
to roots which shoot annoyance
through the deadly human clay

…soon such bloody art
will fill our very pores

…we who fall asleep
beyond the creaking doors.

IDEAS REDUCED TO AMBIENCE

With expressive violins
dressed and mocked by woodwind
on computer radio

the mind which cannot sleep
may yet find peace
in cigarettes stubbed out in the grease

in this warm cocoon of Winter and forgetfulness
inside from the late night drift
of berries thorns and snow

…these were our most tender selves
we vagabonds, we orphaned children
stammering and pacing

we stunted elves
in our stunted youth
our teens and twenties
having ventured forth to truth
and being beaten and betrayed
and crushed…left
to the corridors of the Institution
to mumble thoughts and gather dust.

I was already old then!
even older and more mindless now
…but I have found a certain comfort
in this proper time and place.

A cold and wicked nation!…how I pity
the prophets of our race.