the smiling machine

I saw, but surrendered

to the skeletons telling me not to look.

The wind curling above the dust,

beckoned my heart and it ached.

It swirled the dust road of the trailer park,

then like a sympathetic ghost

hovered above the old mother’s head.

She was holding her face crying silently

not knowing I could see her

the tri-folded letter

taken with the breeze.

I knew there was no comfort,

none that I could give

because I did not know that particular pain,

but I knew from what her pain derived,

I knew why her hands must collect her tears,

I knew why her hands would never dry.

 

Once,

not too long ago,

my daughter and I were learning from each other.

She was learning to drive my pickup 

along roads I drove when I was her age.

The leaves were changing like she and I were. 

I decided it was time,

and I began to tell her the sinister ways they taught me

to rob the blood from my enemy,

terrible and heinous ways to rid men of their limbs 

and sanity,

how easily flesh can tear, 

how eyes lose their stare 

once they are removed from one’s head.

She pulled over, nearly crying,

and asked me why I told her these things.

I looked into her swelling eyes and told her...

Man’s screenplay has no white hats;

The machine is a salesman in the disguise of a w***e.

At no time should you hold its hand. 

It will trick you and send you to a rich man’s war.

 

I stepped back into my trailer,

slowly glanced back at the grieving mother.

In a surreal moment I sent her condolences silently.

I knew when they gave her the letter 

she would be in a bad dream forever.

I wondered how she took it

when her son approached her,

when he told her...

If she crossed her arms or silently conceded,

as he left her with a smile over his shoulder

in his perfectly pressed uniform

carried away by the machine

clutching him gently in its teeth.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

that awful letter delivered, the mother having to concede the loss of her son....his dreams gone, and now she in a bad dream forever...having to bury her son.

so sad, so beautifully expressed.

[Alfred Kukitz]

Silver,

You have my utter respect for your poetry, it's beauty, it's magnificent perception and articulate mastery of the poetic form.
The monsters live and live on always taking youth to its grave.

Regards,
Al