Sleep has sewn the days
that failed their rain.
The jaundiced eyes
once opened to a blur
turn upward, inward,
cased in closing lid

. . . what suppositions
glued themselves with pain,
now unwind
as if to weep
to whit a little pain interred.
"Sleep!" the doctor says
. . . and "sleep" is what we did!

The carrion may have circled skies!
"Or likely just some other kind of bird"
. . . the cats all purr!
A moral blindness shields our fate in kind!
. . . but then sleep
is what our poverty preferred.

Criminal Nuance

You are guilty as sin
of being convicted
of being the kind of man
we want to die
or bury
within a system of dust and bars.

You would waste our money
on justice?
After the facts that we made
were enough for the Great State to win,
and for your cheating lawyers to lose?
And you think we should try again?

Wormy life!
Dirt in a can!
You file your writs!
You rattle the tin!
We would harbor more mercy within
for the moth in its tragic light,
for the politics of the fly!

We won this game the first time!
Why do you think
your possible innocence
removes the guilt of your crime?

Copyright © 2000 by Sam Silva

About the Poet

Sam Silva was born in Washington, D.C. in 1954. His father was a political analyst in relatively sensitive government work and they traveled quite a bit. Sam has been a socialist since the age of 14. He has published nine books of poetry. Trout Creek Press, the publisher of five of these books, has listings of some of them with the major internet bookstores.

E-Mail: samsilva54@email.msn.com

Copyright © 2000-2001 by Denis M. Garrison.