SY ROTH BIO:
He is a retired school administrator living on Long Island. After spending years in the wilderness of work, he finally has time to think and write. He has published in Visceral Uterus and two works to-be-published in Amulet in August and September. He has also had several essays published in Newsday.
Penn
Station
Penn
Station entrance,
he leans
ungracefully
smudges
the wall.
crowds
pass him,
rheumy
eyes hidden behind heavy
droopy
lids,
visible
parts twinkling with chicanery.
his
crooked mien sings dissimulation.
no
pleading signs bedeck him,
weighted
only with deflated balloon-dreams
draped
around his neck
hissing
long dissipated air
into the
ether.
boxes of
sadness
closet
him.
unkept
promises,
exigencies
cram the
valleys of his being
buried
in river muck
of
glacier-gouged pasts, a
substrata
of his flaccid dreams.
no
entreaties,
only
surrender,
trapped
in his mind-doors.
sounds
of the city
girdle
him;
he
unembraced.
Idle
Water Thoughts
they hack
through the earth’s core
machines
biting it,
slipping
their long pipes into the aquifer
squirrling
through thin layers to find water
mussing
lush patches of her
lusting for
her water.
I’m
thirsty.
a dog pees
against the cobblestones,
its owner
tapping his foot
whistling a
you-don’t-see-me tune
I
conjectured—
at the
seemingly endless flow, and
the dog’s
ahhhhh grin
as his
urine burden splashes.
an idle
thought wiggles in
traipsing
through for a playful second--
I see a
Tyrannosaurus Rex behind my eyes
and I watch
him pee
lifting his
huge leg,
evacuating
his bladder--
how much
water would he produce?
a lake?
fill a
cairn?
I think.
I
imagined the waters of
millions of Tyrrani
filling
reservoirs.
I watch
their water seep into the soil
and leak
into yellow cisterns for millennia.
perhaps the
waters of those gothic beasts
nourish us
today,
we being
blessed
by the
nurturing waters of the gargantuas.
My thirst
slaked.
final
observation--
that dog
scratches at the ground with its hind paws,
marches
snappily behind its owner
unconcerned
that he could
be
hydrating future generations
the corers,
as well, still pierce
unwittingly.
I laugh.
Love
Song
hate and
love side-by-side,
vexing
each other.
a
capricious love song
mutilates
their heart-places.
chaos
rings in
rolling peals
creates
phantasms that Hiroshimize walls.
silently
they muster
glaring
eyes
and
shuffle their shoulders
in
opposite directions.
frightened
children,
victims
of a lilting threnody--
in
search of specters,
entombed
spirits,
and
purring witches that
dip-stick
into dreams
stirring
a cauldron’s brew,
of
gossamer conflicts.
and
goggle-eyed black cats
extricated
from sealed walls.
perverse
confessions follow
like
rats gnawing through walls.
they are
dressed in gloomy grieving vestments
swaying
to the melancholic whining
for a
lost master.
spent,
they
slink away.
Ebon
Wall
black wall
monumentally immense,
solid ebon relic of horrors
balled into its inky interior.
impermeable blackness,
darker than the grave
inviting long beginnings
and artlessly quick endings.
head flinches with the trigger
a dreadful scowl splashes their faces
as they slip to the ground.
I live there,
exist on a millennium-long,
bone-weary blotch of earth.
borne away at times
in liquid moments,
to return, and wait
to be prodded erect in front of her
bespattered wall
smelling of iron
comingled with chlorine,
overshadowed by the smell of
disquietude—
no windows to peer out of
no windows in
a permanent black hole
impervious.
electric sense of expectancy
static charges ever present.
howls of incredulity
vibrate the air turbulently like a
tsunami
a tectonic movement of the plates of
the earth
shifting and grinding against one
another
like frenzied lovers
and I rest without expectation of
climax
feeling it.
a red hot eminence sits within,
buried deeply,
a hand will eventually drag me in.
Black
Nuggets
unsuppressed
desire and
cloudy
intentions
reside
in the brutish nightmares
of
Lucifer’s dreams.
they
swim in the ebon cauldron
as
the witches stir an unbridled brew
mixing
in a thimbleful of this and that,
a
pricked pinch of blood,
a
miniscule inky dot,
then
cast spells
loosing
black nuggets into
in
the soup of beings.
mole-like,
these nuggets
dig,
then roar to the surface with the
wooly
ambition a freight train.
they
will bear their fruit in those
bifurcated-genome-sequenced
beings
who
live awash in their own egos.
that
dark seed,
gees
and haws them indiscriminately.
once
hidden
behind
a scrim of verisimilitude,
they
fly out of a twelfth story window
and
end with a splat.
The
quagmire
the blue bubble
glumly sinks
beneath the weight of
insatiable beings who
consume
rather than build.
fading agate
teeter-totters
under the weight of their
puerile inanities.
few saviors
buried among them--
she, the builder
with trowels in one hand,
weapons in the other
willing to defend her creations.
he, possessor of a world
which began
as a big bang of words
clapped together like chalk erasers
and a
willingness to risk all
to keep tomes spun gold
with words
from the funeral pyre where
nestled in their folds
truths lay in wait.
until then,
the quagmire
is our siren.
Nabobs
of Illusion
nabobs of
illusion--
these nabis
pontificate,
exhort,
sing their
own praises
strew
wishes upon the wind
like Johnny
Appleseeds
creating
groves and verdant fields.
they appear
profound,
these
gurus,
nested atop
mountains
contemplating
their eternity.
bogeymen
who lack insight
hide behind
their truths,
freeze
their declarations of right
into ice
cream treats
to be
licked clean
by hungry
masses.
conceive
ideas in cigar-smoked laboratories,
inventing
treacly mixtures
concocted
to whet appetites,
urge their
poster-carrying seals
to bark at
the dangling treats,
fin-clapping
din filling carnival tents.
scared
muammin abdicate
like
fleshless musselmen and
pay homage
cramming
prayers into wall cracks.
nabis
engender fear,
flouncing
minds
in their
whipped wind.
The
quagmire
the blue bubble
glumly sinks
beneath the weight of
insatiable beings who
consume
rather than build.
fading agate
teeter-totters
under the weight of their
puerile inanities.
few saviors
buried among them--
she, the builder
with trowels in one hand,
weapons in the other
willing to defend her creations.
he, possessor of a world
which began
as a big bang of words
clapped together like chalk erasers
and a
willingness to risk all
to keep tomes spun gold
with words
from the funeral pyre where
nestled in their folds
truths lay in wait.
until then,
the quagmire
is our siren.
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