Three Poems by Sy Roth

 

Homage to Kilgore Trout's Supposed World

Supposed.

A trapezoidal quandary
parallel lines like trees somewhere
perhaps.
Wry, twist-your-mouth-into-sour lemon O’s world
mired in crap,
r e v o l v I n g,
e v o l v I n g.

Homo sapiens abide there without discovery

adrift in their banality.
Drag other like junk carts along
Jouncing the contents
Cacophony of
killing,
goring,
reciting nattering fish stories
adrift on intemperate oceans.

Barrels of Laputan feces

Rest beside their scientists
covered in it like FedEx men
a delivery for odoriferous humanoids
who live above.
Below a planet crammed to bursting with creatures
who oink greetings through pursed lips
turn y’alls into eternal frowns.
They squeal love through gritted teeth
covered in soft down of masticated bran muffins
mocha love grimace through their irregularity.

Writing poems of mayhem

squashing them dead on bloody parade grounds
where beautiful words bellowed sweetly
lie hidden beneath bellicose chatter.
Utterances falling from the wind
clatter crystalline no one hearing them,
buried in patriotic fervor.
            Cosmic mind-fuck he called it.
Images rest uneasily on thorn-headed pates
Spiky crowns rest on
a world that Kilgore supposes.




Through an Eschatological Prism

Stamped at birth
Rubicund swatch of prickly
Nucleic acids.

Tattooed cells

Adrift on an ocean of being,
Temporality

A mixed mission of seeking

The end of days.
Machinations of the righteous.

Their gods

Resplendent in their sureties,
Captaining

Rafts of drifting souls.

In their dream suckling virgins
And ripe green apples.

Only One way,

One implacable force
Kicking them to the middle

Running water

Eroding
Their existence.

Colors of the prism

Laved
To blackness.




He Drowns in His Loneliness

Helter-skelter cascade of silent words.
Once a Hindenburg thunder of
Gaseous explosions
All could hear in the Jersey hinterlands.
Now mere dust
Bunnies that hop timidly off into an empty glade.

In the room they come and go

Hurricane of words,
His lips moving to their rhythms
As they lock into their conversations.
Their heads do not turn to him.
Their news flashes silently flapping in their breezes.

His eyes follow them,

Mind a nomad wandering in a private desert
In search of the mirage of inclusion.
It does not come.
They march in lockstep away
To Dylan tunes
While he drowns in his loneliness.

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 in Leaves of Ink, Ithaca Lit, Fat City Review, Haggard and Halloo, RAP, Crisis Chronicles, Parentheses, Poet and Geek Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, Pif Magazine, The Circle Review, Poetry Super Highway, Millers Pond Review, Earthborne, Nostrovia, Cyclamens and Swords, The Germ, Rockhurst Review, 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.  Twice selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway .  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 and Point Mass anthology published by Kind of Hurricane Press.  A Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan. Best of Poem selected for inaugural edition of The Second Hump, volume IV.