Poem for Sam Silva

 

Poem for Sam Silva

 

It’s the shithead, he’d say

When he called, meek-voiced

Deep in the need to read me a poem.

 

Four, five times a week

We sent each other envelopes

Stuffed with typed poems

Searching for one reader

Learning the line, making a voice,

 

End of the 80s, the most boring

Decade in American history.

Sam was paranoid schizophrenic.

My wife thought I was crazy, too.

 

Mr. Peeler, you’ve got to hear this,

He’d say when he called

In his booming Voice of God

From the house in Fayetteville

Where he lived with Rachel the artist

Who he worshipped

In love poem and love poem.

She saved him every day.

 

I would listen to him.

Then we would compliment each other.

Throwing life preservers through land lines.

We didn’t know yet how obscurity

Would settle over us like a protective shell,

Delivering us from the worse things

We might become.

 

Now we are old men,

Sam only able to write haiku,

And me, well, look at this shit.

 

But there is nothing more relaxing

Than an hour of his latest e-book.

No longer a shithead,

No more Voice of God.

He’s damned good at it.

Mas Mas, my old friend.