Madness Infects the Sun
Another daft one hits the streets,
arms swing in wide arcs along the avenue
Woodstock this time, streets ablaze with gawkers.
This joyful walker jauntily sings
Jimmy Soul’s Never Make a Pretty Woman Your Wife
aloud until the veins in his neck bulge like bridge cables,
and snap when he gets to the word “wife”,
lips grotesquely twisted into lemony cylinders
punctuated by explosive fricatives.
Sixties-revival, this Gimpel fool,
cowboy vest, Joseph’s Technicolor coat nightmare,
fringes dancing like crazed marionettes,
Jimmy Hendrix’s motley cap jauntily obscures his face,
greasy, yellow bangs peek out of the brim
slap his twitching eyelids with every bounce,
bell bottoms flap in the sticky main street breeze
accompanying his Weeble-wobbling movements
in time to if you’re going to be happy.
The show grinds exceedingly slowly around him,
undiminished stares while their ice cream cones melt
until for the rest of your life becomes a voiced dot
on the horizon of this main street
where madness infects the sun.
Building Castles in the Clouds
Malodorous man cloaks himself in amnesia
seeks answers--
errant musings of the crazed
building castles in the clouds,
Gulliver’s visit to Laputa,
where men find answers in barrels of excrement.
He searches the bins in railway stations,
raises a newspaper trophies in the air
or waves a half-eaten Subways
like gold medals won in a two-hundred meter swim.
He scurries away into waiting rooms with his treasures
daring anyone to challenge his space.
Glimmers of a smile lift the hair above his lips
into a U under his nose.
Black garbage bag crinkles at his feet
bulges with his things.
Enclosed in a wall of invisibility,
he wraps himself in artifice.
Hidden secrets--
well-worn boots snuggle around them.
Three eyelets undone,
laces weeping, wilted exclamation points
tongues bent mockingly
wags at those around him.
The others search their watches for time and trains.
Waiting for Act Three
Whispered cabals,
whirly-gig contradictions,
tumbleweed deeds turned topsy-turvy.
They yakked behind closed doors, in fusty rooms
blathering about the shadow’s deeds.
These baying dogs howling atop their mountains,
swathed in a cacophony of husky silence,
portmanteau bags bursting with innuendo,
USDA prime stories worth more than action.
Strings of Christmas lights,
Their shadows stretched long,
They marched lockstep behind him.
Their chatter, his scarlet letter,
sediment in a sacramental wine, where clouded titillation lives,
squatter, miserable among miserables.
Maligned by the tattlers and naysayers
pursued eternally toward their end,
vindication waits patiently for Act Three.
Sy Roth comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. cRetired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai , far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace. He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications such as Cyclamens and Swords, The Germ, Rockhurst Review, Toucan, Wilderness Interface Zone, Red Ochre, Bong is Bard, Danse Macabre, Mel BraKe Press, Larks Fiction Magazine, Exercise Bowler, Otoliths, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, brief, The Weekenders, The Squawk Back, Bareback Magazine, Dead Snakes, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Peripheral Surveys, Scapegoat Review, The Artistic Muse, Inclement, Napalm and Novocain, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), Em Dash, Subliminal Interiors, South Townsville Micropoetry Journal, The Penwood Review, The Rampallian, Vox Poetica, Clutching at Straws, Downer Magazine, Full of Crow, Abisinth Literary Review, Every Day Poems, Avalon Literary Review, Napalm and Novocaine, Wilderness House Literary Review, St. Somewhere Journal, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Neglected Ratio, Windmills Magazine and Kerouac’s Dog. One of his poems, Forsaken Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle. Also selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway , September 2012. His work was also read at Palimpsest Poetry Festival in December 2012. He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics. Included in Poised in Flight anthology published by Kind of Hurricane Press, March 2013. A Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan.
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