Travelers Welcome

Travelers Welcome

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Agincourt Mud When the Hurburly’s Done

by Sy Roth

Dinner parlance
sides established
across from the cheese cake
and the Mandelbrot.
coffee slurped in gallons
through a fitful Christmas night
the monologues of sides,
their gesticluations,
their recriminations,
like jackals wait
to cleanse the peace

Allegiances are like chaff
the wind’s merest rustle,
a baffling exhalation,
stirs it
whispered words,
Falstaff to Hal,
tangled in the rigmarole
of uncollected debts
contrived in alleyways
seeking that which offends

Agincourt mud mires them
in life’s blood-struggles,
a ragtime beat
of war tugs
proclaiming sides
combatants engage the boils,
lance them,
pus oozing into buckets.
blood congeals in those fields where
treachery, a voodoo lily,
bides its malodorous time.

staffs eventually fall
tired victors
sink into the silent muck,
exhausted,
obsequy delivered.

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