Lost in Bitter Gaze

by Sy Roth

Ovid’s disambiguation rests on his face.
Their lies overwhelm him.

Behind his cheerful masque
He finds another face to hide behind.

He prances for them,
A jester in motley.

They obfuscate
with their vacant, guffawing unrealities.

His eyes wine-sparkled
Dart hither and yon in their sockets.

They sweep the masses into their choking cloud,
Shoo them away into their respective corners.

His eyes crinkle, lids droop downward
To dim their radiance.

Their lips rumba
A jumble of consonants, rumbled in assonance.

He hides in their lingua franca,
muffled, chattering tongues.

They huff and puff
prevarications  ride afloat on flaccid waves.

He gets caught in the glow of their untruths,
Beneath klieg lights and their chicanery.

They metamorphose into a void
Replete with a lapel of prideful pins.

Behind them the flags flap noisily.
Before him, the hordes flap in his breeze,

Lost in a bitter gaze at them,
They ignore his omissions.

Glow of Untruths

by Sy Roth

Ovid’s disambiguation rested on his face.
Their lies overwhelmed him
Behind his cheerful masque
Another face to hide behind.

He pranced for them,
A jester in motley
Obfuscating in their vacant,
guffawing unrealities.

His eyes wine-sparkled
Hither and yon in their sockets,
Swept the masses into a choking cloud
Away into their respective corners.

His eyes crinkled
Lids drooped downward
To dim their radiance,
Lost in a bitter gaze at them.

His lips rumbaed
A jumble of consonants
rumbled in assonance
over picket fence teeth.

Hidden beneath his lingua franca,
A muffled, chattering tongue
huffs and puffs in the water’s wake,
prevarications left  afloat on his flaccid waves.

Caught in the glow of untruths,
Beneath klieg lights that strip them of their chicanery,
They metamorphose into politicians,
Replete with a passel of prideful lapel pins.

Flags flap noisily draped behind him.
Before him,
Hordes flap in his breeze, and
Ignore his omissions.

Dei Profundis Waiting

by Sy Roth

So I hock a loogie,
A gray sticky mass
loosed  in disgust
profundity in name only--
instead a fear projectile.

Somewhere deep  congealed like muddy frozen ice--
Converts into a soul cleansing expectorant.
Perhaps to become a signal to extraterrestrial beings.

New sidewalk amoeba hurled at the earth--
News at 10.

How else to express disgust--
self-flagellation?
attention getting somewhen, but
cat-o-nine tails?
unappetizing.

You haven’t been at all attentive,
could care less about the  others
converted into looped Seinfeld episodes.

I’ll suck the loogie from the floor,
if forgiven their trespasses.

They trusted--
waited,
cheeks pulled in with bated breath
for an answer--
hollow-cheeked faces fear the ocean’s depth,
they see Jonah’s fate played out in
xylophonic rhythms.

Their sentries watch--
Wait,
ready their clarion call.

While I waited.
Dawn broke,
nothing from the earless entity,

time weighted eternities…

while the loogie rests curbside,
Penitential vestige.

Graveled voice
 Silenced.

Balance

by Sy Roth

Tittup of white feathers,
Neve snowfall of them
When they enter the dovecote unwelcomed.
The tenders blink in the whiteout of their squawking.
A soft down rests like a dandruff blanket
On their shoulders and in their hair.

Doves separated in their frenzy seek reconnection,
Finally a calm settles in like the eye of a storm
And the tenders go about their collection duties.

Their rakes muck at the ground.
Doves have left a thick paste of their brew.
Tenders’ faces covered in masks
To dam their malodorous stench.
The coop a stifling prison
The airless aerie where
Life teeter-totters on their expectation.

They all know—
The trees
Wait stoically.
And the tenders know
They fill their baskets with the white droppings.
The doves know for they coo.
When they sing prayerful benedictions to the air,
And when they fill the ground with their gift,
They are one.

The tree blesses them
With a snowy shuddering of its branches
And its dangling fruit.

Amalek, Feared No God

by Sy Roth

The tired ones hung back
walk-weary lines of them
snaking the rear
shuffling gait
young ones their crutches.

Youthful steps moved the others forward
heads mounted to their goal
inattentive to the rear.

Amalek swore to his soldiers
he would preserve them,
desiccate the healthy,
consume the old and bent.

Godless ones licked their lips,
for the laggards were a tempting lot
easily consumed
swept away before so
the others could mourn.

They ate the rear with
cannibalistic gusto.
Youth buried beneath their weak,
laved in their blood.

A storm of tears unglued the skies.
Men razed their dreams,
the meek,
the weak,
the infirm,
the young
lost in a morass of ego.

Amalek feared no god,
only himself.

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.

Last Vote

by Sy Roth

His liver conspired against him,

then the State.

His liver consumed by cancer cells;

his vote by rules.

Relentless cancer chomped and ate

It left one morsel he could digest,

his one rule

duty must prevail.

Before cancer switched off the lights

last act of a living man drove him.

Vote, make choices

despite fading light  and speech.

He did, then died

but the law proclaimed it null

nixed because he died--

Rules.

Last vote hangs from a tree in limbo.

No matter his service his reality expunged.

Rules trumped

his last human act.