A Poem by Sy Roth

Merry-Go-Round

Most everyone does
diversion.
Plays life on a chess board--
rooks risking baby steps
expendable in a black and red world,
castles straight-lining, yee and haw,
bishops gallivanting in slippery els.

Engorged by justification,
life simply ends in making choices
effective/ineffective choices
they matter not
our baptism,
immersion in forever minutia.

Playful obsession,
need to carry on, cavort,
one follows another,
builds a hierarchy.
Tower of Babel
eating/catching the art of eating
diverting/dodging the flotsam of men,
all mired in various grades and globs of shit,
final photograph of be-smattered headstones.

Polonius grabs the gold ring,
dies behind the arras glib fool--
anyway.

All is merely a merry-go-round--
pick your horse or whirligig,
spinning and rising and lowering
beneath the crests of ocean waves
to find ways to numb souls.

It's reality that sucks.