Righteous Forfeiture
He brushes the sidewalks
Corn-husked whisk broom
Swishing mechanically back and forth
Vestiges tattooed to the earth.
Twinkling in the distance
A starred greeting
From some niche in a snow-capped mountain
Indelicately greets stony flesh.
Noxious air rises there in the morning light
Virtue tumbles indelicately with the man.
The sweeper toils around him
Pausing only to spit at the ground
And to peer at the dew-hazed sun’s
Failure to warm the ground
Except in the steaming pond
Pooling at his feet.
Neighbors tupping neighbors
In their revulsion song.
She bent indecorously over a table
Liquid eye watching drifting flakes of ash,
He hair-steering her toward limbo.
From a corner comes a Babel of rutting heaves.
Sara melts
And a mewling cry
Seeks her ululating lips.
The cleaner bends to his task
Cursing the ground
Deaf to the wails and staccato chatter of
The apes swinging rampant among the ruins.
Sara, she whispers sadly.
Yevo, he silently shrieks back.
Spirits Dwell
Where silence exists,
They perch and conduct their monkish vigilance
Responding to every electrical discharge--
Doorbell,
Flash of light.
Anguished cry of a childhood taken
Undulating in colossal waves
Brain flapped by lapping waters.
Dark-winged freeloaders
In miniscule hidey-holes, fusty garrets
Rest impatiently on high wires,
Ogle all newcomers,
Scrutinize their behaviors,
Memorize faces, and then
Signal that intruders encroach.
Swarming battle of crows
Dwelling in murky nooks and crannies,
Muddled phantasms, ghosts and Dybbuks
Sooted phalanxes,
Squawking congress of ebon islets
Black army arrayed on dying trees
Willful, gelatinous forms
Tangled uniluminated crawl spaces
Rolled in miles of remembrances.
The world scampers about blithely
While silent words and screams
Emerge from synaptic cataclysm.
Disrupt equilibrium
Like unwanted relatives,
Persnickety guests,
Taking up residence in the creases.
Night will emerge
With its unglad tidings.
Sy Roth is a retired school administrator and has finally found the sounds of silence and the time to think whole thoughts. This has led him to find words and the ability to shape them. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Mad Swirl, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’Kitch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry and The Eloquent Atheist.
No comments:
Post a Comment