Sam Silva

Judas as the Silver Messiah

What frosty hearts look beyond the dead man

in late April

after a freezing shower

ruins the warmth and the Easter hallelujahs!

...forgone now to whatever ice age comes

with its frozen tears.

As a man

or as a crowd

the movement toward bliss

is shamed and embittered

and was more honestly laid out

in it's cold original poverty

among the beggars and sheep of Bethlehem

among the whores and sinners

at Jerusalem's core.

A man with holes in his pockets

and ashamed to live on

beyond the festival of fools

once the lumpish parade is gone.

In the Lonely Winter of This Strange Nation

The weak flesh longs to fall asleep,

to nod and doze in somnambulant seepage

in a room like a forest, dark and deep

...computer and moon

...night sky and screen

...windows to worlds

of ideas

that flicker

and dance

in forbidden hallucination.

Yet frozen and mean...this ideation,

for sleep is always denied this weak flesh.

Awake in the ice of tired creation,

in the lonely winter of this strange nation.

Snow and ice...and a winter cresh.

The Voices of Christian Men Out There

What do I think of the world out there?

Of the Christian city's metallic expanse?

It's plastic suburbs

...the weight of our mutual gluttony

and likewise lust

in this worldly dance?

I do little...much less too much wrong.

I harbor a song

and try to present my thoughts

like shavings from a wooden statuette!

And...the voices of Christian men

view so easily the demonic

...see the devil in everything

including me.

So that a day like Christmas or Easter come

or in some remarkable evening solitude

and I try

within my mind, to posit a simple prayer.

They interrupt my thoughts

...they call with wild and blasphemous insult

'til such meditation leads to regret.

Not even Heaven and faithful bliss

....but a simple prayer.

They deny me this

...the voices of Christian men out there....

Sam Silva © 2008