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 words in a poem

…meaningless ideas
that irritate an eyeball’s lining…or is it
just the computer screen
blinking a shut off warning
in surreptitious yellow!

Ugly men
may never think of sex themselves
they grew old avoiding danger
and eat food full of salt and texture
while nursing diet coke

till they fall asleep in their rocking chairs
and doze into their brief pleasure…

The Minor Role of the Artist

Computer Straus!
…meandering waltz
of thought and lights
in warm things for the ashen mind
when dusk and spring
begin again
the meaning of their ancient ageless
innocence of furtive sin
which Heaven has engendered
with a gently mocking river’s grace
upon the face
of its own kind…

…in doing so
all tragedy and hardship
are born beyond the winter snow
and lifted up to paradise

…a tear before the comedy!
…a bloody feast!,
before the cakes and ice!

Opium Tales at the End

Soothing cigarettes and pills
whose lines like time keep traveling
in warm sweet exhalation

…that smoke of sheer oblivious bliss
nights when the pillow meets the head
in dreams alive
with their own kiss

unraveling
our dopey wills
and giving sex its spirit source.

Oh island of the living dead!
Oh hidden house in an evil nation.
A place of rest from pain within.

Beyond those lonely acts of sin
and retribution
history gives

…a pale ghost looks on and lives!
Four riders of Apocalypse
tired of the meaning which war gives

rest like bones in a place of peace
dismounting each
from his own horse.