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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