Dr. Dennis Siluk's First Award, 1965

News clipping from the Washington High School Newspaper, 1965--Dr. Siluk's First Award!   (Rosa)

The Mad Drunk

The Mad Drunk

 (…or, Obstinate Drunk)

“The sting by a Bonita in the milky froth of the Sea…”

Time and again during my drinking days

People hurt my eyes…

As a drunk, when awake I had little satisfaction

Beyond the drink!

Every conscious action is a moment:

A blaze in raw glare that hurts!

Sobering up was like climbing up an iron ladder,

On a ship at sea, from out of a pit:

Having a stifling: heart, head, and back;

Forever seeking long sleeps.

For so long I felt as the midmost center;

When in reality, I was just one among the many!

Drinking as miserable as it becomes,

Not to drink is simply a new and harsher misery!

Thus, one has to choose; sobriety or booze.

In time one learns s/he has entered the

Shadow Valley, and must face the truth…! 

Life becomes an unbearable thing—

Here, you discover dead men do not rise,

It is where the aching weariness seeks

Everlasting peace!

The sting by a Bonita in the milky froth of the

Sea water, beings one to the automatic

Instinct to want to live: give back the will for life—

Although s/he knows death does not hurt,

It was life, the pangs of life, and one knows

A decision has to be made:

Either to fall deeper into the darkness

—and that instinct I know, which at one point

Was fine with me, if I indeed had to live a life

Of a drunk! Knowing its viper like strangulation!

Or sneer at death and change my position to a

Vertical one; knowing too often, the mad drunk

Chooses the Valley Shadow.

Also knowing change has few friends, if any!

Because their decision is self-served!

So, your decision is yours alone!

No: 4532/8-27-2014

Curse of the Suns

(Subtitle: Armageddon’s Stellar Doom)

The silence inside the stars, from earth’s vision: men decry to God’s

       wisdom, is not their vision, this is when God had blinked his eyes,

and the evening stars will have trembled, no longer in a solitude or rest,    

       and balance.

This was when all creation had to face cosmic tides of chaos, in the

       heavens.

“How deep is this abyss of night?” will be asked: when chaos will not rest!

Man will ask and seek, as the seas ebb and sway, — the oblivious

“Whomever they are in this deep, Armies of eternal night cold and bold:

       those soldiers from the ramparts of some remote garrison, inside some far-off nebula…why do they approach?”

They seek to storm beyond the immortal lights of Orion!

They gaze upon the gulfs in the curvatures of time: they wish to burn, and

       they walk with stellar doom.

These armies, immense, should they not be hidden from earth, wrath would

       they bring—

Until now, God has made them unforeseen!

And man has only dreamed in dreams of their schemes.

Should dreams become reality, they would create a battle path of menace

       that would sway irrevocable war—

Wars for a generation—

Armageddon’s stellar doom: a deep blood splash, from the heavens,   

       wherein lies the unbegotten.

How narrow the channel between them and us— they even now set eyes

       upon our orbit for them; and to them we are but the untrodden dens of

       the cosmic strange… to conquer and enslave!

Lo! The brief yet cunning evil kept in suitable shape for this gloom filled

       day, prophetic doom, approaches—

Marked by annexed darkness, unstable black matter and energy, with

       thrones of fire, from some lost destiny, no longer silenced by God’s

Timepiece, thus, the ghostly hours have come, Orion’s horsehead of light

       its firmamental gloom, belted with suns and showered with chaos

Has seen the earth’s helm, its sublime array, now comes this heavenly fray

       this, march of menace… an untillable immense!

The whole universe now in high unrest—; in a darker darkness, where man

       has never been, nor seen, where matter is thick, and as liken to hot magma mass, where dead stars are swallowed up  deep into  is spiral  pit of   

       cosmic darkness, where once the angelic prison for the unvirtuous seraphim were imprisoned, no longer are caught  in a fiery quarry,  its

       endless maze, swaying in appallingly walls, trying to escape those fatal days — these cosmic foes, ere, they know their doom filled, as the axles of

       earth knows it can break, if only for a moment, to create a hush so deep… no thing or bring, would be able to withstand the swift

       immeasurable night’s doom—Lo! From the lapse of form!

Lest Elohim’s hand take up man’s fate!

Behold, not even the stellar strongholds deep in Orion, with their cosmic

      besieging armies, and their legionaries, nor the supreme armies of the deep spiral abyss—whom are but barbaric eyes to God—should he

       interfere, in these not so far-off days, man would vanish into the haze, the invading flames, of chaos!—

And should not those days be shortened, all that would be left would be a 

       cosmic tomb, and the grit of firmamental gloom!

And I have seen in a vision, of those not so far-off days: the sun will be

       powerless to illume the moon, dwarfed—; the time of sorrows.

And I heard in those not so far-off days: denial of this end, this perfect and

       final war of: mutate was man’s mind to this comet’s like blaze, of destruction. 

And to them that would not kneel, were thrown into a fiery mote; into a  

        encoded doom by the dark messengers, of gloom.

Now the vision has passed, all that was to be hidden into the unfathomed

       stalls of mystery, will appear tier by tire, until the very end, is without question! 

No: 4430 (July 2, 2014)/ revised and reedited August 26, 2014

Old man’s Wishful Traveling

(The coming of Old Age)

O h yes, yes, I’d like to travel more,

Like a troubadour;

It’s a constant nagging at my brain,

A pain behind my ear.

Now let me see, where I would like to go:

I’d like to straddle the Tower of Pisa—

And know the feel of the throbbing

Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin.

I’d like to pose, preen and sway,

Coming out of the Potala Palace!

I’d like to admire the background of Tibet.

And then by plane, go see Antarctica,

And if possible, Jordan’s Petra.

I want to see all of this, through my

Astonished eyes; write a poem about

Each place, then set me down to die.

Written: 6-18-2014 (No: 4383)

Last Year of Innocence ((Blank Verse) (a Minnesota Poem))

Last Year of Innocence

          ((Blank Verse) (a Minnesota Poem))

I well remember, that that year was young—

A time of raking leaves and birds chippering;

       Beside the many lakes: the fish were biting,

       And tall stocks of corn eager to unfold.

All through that year my shadow walks were bright,

As though a sun cloud waited over my head;

       And this would be my year of transition—

       That is never forgotten, and never replaced.

Long gone this year that held my first dreams:

It vanished like snow long given to the grass;

       Yet tho I know, no other year so innocent

       That brought forth that one youthful first dream:

—part of the dream was called poesy for its depth,

And part called peace, for the year was tender,

       (for I was young, innocent and slender)

       And part called heart-ache, to be lost forever!

No: 4492 (7-27-2014)  / Note: For the curious reader the last year of innocence for me was 1959, I was twelve years old, I wrote my first poem “Who”; the following year 1960, would be the year of chaos, transition, guilt, wild adventures.

A Tired Poet (in Poetic Prose)

A Tired Poet (in Poetic Prose)

 I tolerate thee, and witness: I serve with all my thoughts.

If I provoke, I t wasn’t careless— D.L. Siluk

I am a tired poet.

A man of music and soul, and much more; for the whole of the world I

       could love and leave, and all the lovely little women, leave them in the

       cool shadow of the bush, and let them grieve.

That was when I was a gusty man, and not quite near a telltale poet!

When I was a man, you would not call a man, not tired, and belonged to no

       holy house—

Perhaps with every simmering moment more mouse than man; more bull

       and only wanting good times!

But now my blood creeps old, and slow, and God has washed my black

       soul; and I am a ramrod of a poet; perhaps too harsh a poet, too

       demanding an overseer, disciplinarian.

I was once like a child in a nightmare who hears a monster in the back of

       him, and cannot speak!

Oh, time enough has changed me, wrinkled my horns, filled up the mouse

       hole, for I gave my soul blindly to God with a slashed eye, and he

       asked, “What is it you want?”

Innocence and truth, blessed my last black breath, “A Poet” I said.

And he lifted and planted into my head, all the deadly virtues that plagued

       earth, and its death! Things a poet must know.

Thus as you see, I have little modesty.

Am I at such an hour of need, no longer demon-ridden, just tired, in need of

       something… but what?

Perchance a gusty wind.

I dabble in forgotten thoughts, I am like the ancient poet who dwells in

       gothic towers to avoid a hair of a sin, and still I find I  am not so unlike my colleagues an amateur evil—but nonetheless evil, a bad paradigm: a

       philology of Babel, for I have a love of learning from man, if only they

       could deliver eternal wisdom! But so few have (Ratzinger, being one who has).

I am a hieratic, sacerdotal in mind and soul for both sacred and secular

       writings; I try to push darkness over the edge of the world, and I break the law when it is obviously absurd, nonsense: for it serves neither God

       nor man; but that’s who I am: a man of paradox, as if coiled in the

       vulture boiling sun.

Yet I try to be an honorable poet even for the old rubbish and polluted

       world, a world draped white, and once under its canopy, tossed with hail stones, —

Yes, I had my stirring days, my youth!

And I wrote like other poets of innumerable images, with enchantment,

       confidence, like a bricklayer not forgetting where to put his mortar!

Seeking what my age demanded, but giving what I felt the age deserved!

I suppose this is what made me so tired, not broken, just tired!

Sitting back now in my plain chair, back slumped, slightly lowered eyes on

       my notebook paper, breathing slowly to write this prose poem out, that gravitas to my tiredness: I am sandwiched between space and time, I am

       matter with substance, thus, every word like an old man’s thick blood, forever to circle this body, causing me to move in slow motion, no, it is not

       death yet, only exhaustion: I have hidden energy, even in my REM

       sleep!

My tiredness is like old dust on kettles and clocks, and my old my piano, it

       shifts through the house to and fro, rides like rust on my flesh, and the hedges on my arms and legs crack, holds me down some,  and time has

       squeezed out of  my tongue all its substance; but God has taught me to love man, and animals and plants before this, the full gamut of life, grave

       and beloved  to even the grass, and even the daughters of darkness.

My wife says in my dreams, or perhaps nightmares, there are jagged

       fragments of my youth coming out in the middle of the night, this

       keeps my eyelids shut, a weight of a tired crumpled poet.

But I have found dignity, and with such, comes tragedy, I think:

       nevertheless, I am not empty.

And I will write on, I have more thoughts, although my head, my brain is

       like bad flooring, thus, down there in the dark I become unable to think,

       move… at times!

Yes I have come out of the lair of unfrocked youth, now dew dipped in

       layers of years, to old age, where sleep and good, and forever-ness, and slowness and deep thinking, and at a few corners perhaps rare

       wisdom surfaces, and now with hobnailed tales!

And with all this I find an imbalance coming into my left eye, in my ankles

       and knees, the balls of my feet, my temper at times can penetrate the walls.

There is no except from this tiredness, the atypical poet; what is the crime

       here he sees?

Out of a saint’s cell he has found it.

Hence, now the poet has become the owl, the fox; the latch of the cell has

       been lifted, and out of the webbed dark, the hearthstone tales of the world has been put into the heart of this tired poet, and like the dew that   

       falls on the wind, so does the task of those tales fall on the heart and soul of the poet, as the world falls silent as having been pushed into a

       cyclone of fear, he must express, tired or not, tell the gospel,  as the

       devil comes sly as a fox on his heels.

What is he going to tell? Tell that the saint in the cell committed him too

       tell?

He has asked his Angelic Power, for this kind of strength.

       “The world has committed treason of a sad sort—; the world has come to being a snake eating his own tail; it has wounded its own head, with

       blasphemies to God, this is treason, and the world appears to be ignorant of it, or just indifferent to it, or pretending it isn’t!”

And yes, the tired, this tired poet knows it to be so true!

And he knows the judge who sits on the highest cloud with the politeness

       of a nobleman, is observing!

On earth they call him ‘The hangman’ because hatful hearts, abhor having

       discipline, order, rules; because they want to subvert the canons of God, without God’s permission, and cannot see that God has placed those

       cannons in place for man’s sacred safety. 

And the poet says to the man high up on the cloud:

        “You’re wasting your time, man has again fallen into the sea of sin!”

Accordingly, the poet broods, this tired poet broods in ill-health at times,

       his heart darkens, at man’s stage of justice.

God knows the poet because of the lack of his hesitancy to reason, and his

       generalizations, he would be to man’s disadvantage, should he make him a judge over man, so he will not allow the poet to step into such an

       office, even though he knows man has been reduced to a technical

       imbecile—

And God reminds the poet, as tired as he may be: “Yes, their treason has

         tired you down and it has to some degree, annoyed me, but you were once like the various men you have witnessed, and now little in common

       with them but your poems—, but you do understand as a poet with a soul so baffled over the minds of the world, would only—if I allowed you to

       judge them—defeat my purpose, the very reason I went to the cross!”

“Yes,” the poet says, realizing between enmities and acting as God would

       Wish him to act; he’d lose the goat and the rope:

Why, because of his sentimentality, would have vanished, and he would

       have been the monster behind the  backs of the whole world.

The poet is thinking now, me! Is this tiredness, turning into madness!

Now at the end of days, is the old demon-ridden me, coming back?

He has pseudo-prophetic visions for the world.

Or what is it he has, is it just a broken egg? He’s thinking hard on this!

Should he be clapped in irons and sent to the nuthouse, like Pound was?

Yet, we pay him for the darkness, for the acumen he shed.

He did not discover that the world was wrong, or that it was committing

       treason, he simply pointed it out;

He knows it’s a crime against God, and he knows all life has gotten him

       tired, and at God’s calling he may be resistant or overwhelmed to go

       home, who’s to say until that very moment arrives—

But if he stops to think, perhaps he is looking for the impossible before

       that happens, and that would be, a bridge for man, and this in itself has

       already been done,  and Satan has consummated this a crime to cross.

But he wants to do more, and God knows this: his faithful cry, is the outcry 

       of a ceaseless, yet tired poet, against the ruled solar system.

Naked and unforsaken, he grieves for an abrupt change, but this will not

       happen: why? Because the lawless sun, and its solar system, is like man on earth, it comes designed with its own will.

No: 4527 (8-20-2014)

The Drunk and Depression

The Drunk and Depression

In 1984, I had stopped drinking

I stirred in my recovery

It was reasonable, to be expected!

At eight years sobriety, I bought a pin.

And for a decade I was planning!

In 1994, I had heart surgery

With love and dread, I had given my

Silent goodbyes. But I had survived!

Leaving the hospital I had not spoken

Much, — as if my brain-stem was dead, I

Had had a stroke on the operating

Table, two heart attacks to boot

Before that — Hence, I had beat the

Odds, but there was recovery yet!...

And then in 1996, I acquired

Multiple Sclerosis: forgetting

This and that, every other minute—

My spine twisted like a corkscrew

To a painful end…dropping my fork

And spoons and sleeping endlessly!

I grinned a lot back then, and then

Hidden in the bathroom, coiled like an

Embryo, the pain diminished; if only

I could have ordered a new spine, a

Transplant that would never bend!

I became quite irritable—yes the soul

And the mind survives death, but in such

Cases you always feel like you’re dying!

One’s pain is so bad one vomits in delirium.

Nonetheless, I survived it all, and was

Recovered from alcohol, with just

One slip, or a year’s relapse, as they

Call it: it makes one feel odd! It would be

One year out of thirty-one! The second year

To be exact, and then I had to start my

Sobriety over again…

—you become more vulnerable

To depression, trying to balance

Emotions with physical health! You

Want to do all the things you never did!

Your new body needs, new body strength!

Clearer thoughts, regimentation, peace!

Then when my mother died, in 2003;

We, my brother and I cremated her:

Now but ashes in a wooden urn…

Like daffodils, on a peony hill!

She laid as pallid gray ash— and I, I

Now went into that dark place,

Where humanism is marred, I’m a

Mechanism for spiral thoughts, a

Suicidal potential blood clot!

All stemming from alcoholism…

Mood swings: like feet on winters

Icy sleet: like a wave gray at sea!

That was me, it is me—an endless

Semicolon; …

No: 4528 (8-20-2014)