The Poetry Collection of Sy Roth
Sunday Morning Rye-Wound
By Sy Roth
Sunday mornings,
Garden City wraps around the corner.
In tow, Mother shleps me to George’s Bakery,
sweet smell of baked goods shoving its odors
Up the street and into my nose
typewriter staccato bread slicer clacking for the
famished,
Readies another rye, pimpled with caraway seeds
one, I would eventually tuck under my arm,
smothering its warmth.
Line extends beyond the stationery store,
Five stores down.
We snail our way to the front of the line
watching George-happy recipients
hie their breads and cakes home
protecting them like a cache of Chanukah gelt.
Inside the door, mother orders me to
“get our number”.
Numbers are vital.
Gelda, behind the counter,
moves each along with a rod poke,
loudly announces “customer 28, customer 28”!
Customer 28 responds “here”, and moves forward.
Gelda slices his rye punctiliously,
Pulls the red and white string from a ceiling
container,
Wraps his cake into a box,
Until our number, 31, is called.
“Number 31,” Gelda calls in a scratchy tremolo.
Mother pokes me to answer.
I found no voice in the brouhaha.
Ticket held tightly like a knife in my fist.
Number invisible.
Silence reigns in me,
Turtle’s head hidden in my hard shell.
All wait for a response.
Speak?
My voice, to be heard first?
Visibility on a white steed.
Mother who taught me invisibility
pushes me- announce, she barks.
Even the rye could not induce me into the arena of men.
George’s lions roared me into silence.
“Here!” mother proclaims, glares.
Red-faced shuffle to the counter.
At home, the rye, no longer the same
Sunday, a mirage, a steamy memory,
Mother clucks,
“Perhaps invisibility is better.”
She shmeered her slice of rye sadly,
butter like viscous concrete over its surface.
He swallowed his shame instead.
Secrets
By Sy Roth
Watch the houses that house them.
Observe the curtains rustle in the
windows.
See shuttered windows.
Hear whispered breath uttered in
shadows
Lese majesty on any truth.
Don’t confront them.
Lock the sibilant susurrations of
lies—
It
did not happen--
Away behind solid doors,
Sturdy, metal doors,
Solder them closed
Nightly, truth taps at the walls,
Plays a pince-nez tune in a
darkened cell.
Beats away at the darkening noon,
Behind tightly shut eyes
Imagines truth out and about
Prancing sprite in a verdant
forest.
Deny them exit from their
hidey-holes,
He won’t let them out of their
empty rooms.
Darkling memories button Away--
Like flies buzzing around death,
Emily’s world of circling secrets
Locked in the ink of memories.
Trained night clown whose
smiling face does not reveal him.
Unbending lips may not bend
into a smile, corners curled an intersection of
Unspoken words in his silent
world.
Not here,
Spirits whimper.
Not here.
Let them be still
Behind the drapes
Behind the windows
In an airless world with their
Secrets maintained.
A
Discourse between Thinkers
By Sy Roth
Gandhi sits cross-legged at the
feet of Einstein.
Diapered, pampered by his
rectitude.
Oversized eyes lost behind his
glasses.
Gandhi
speaks first while Einstein draws on his pipe:
So Einstein, Mr. Genius,
what is it that you do?
Einstein:
I trace realities from broken lines
that illuminate the heavens.
You think me brilliant, Ghandi?
A genius, I could create this?
with a Jackie Mason shrug.
No, we are merely interpreters,
puzzle-masters reconstructing the nothing,
DaVincis envisioning something
from bread trails
left helter-skelter in well-worn
footpaths
trod by a million other dopes like
me.
I chew the crumbs hungrily, spit
them out in masticated mash
for others to nourish their
curiosities.
Einstein,
another long draw on his pipe,
exhalation of puffs of smoke:
Gandhi, you think I created this?
I, the great conductor?
A Jackie Mason finger poked in the
eye of the air.
Think again, pal, not me
there must be a band leader
swishing his baton,
Benny Goodman maintaining
universal rhythms.
Would we be here without one?
Gandhi scribbles
every word:
So Einstein, now that you have
gobbled the crumbs, chewed them,
explained what others have failed
to see,
found a universe in the merest of
particles,
how do you lead your life?
Einstein thinks, ruffles his white
mane,
sadness echoes in his response—
Einstein:
…as if everything is a miracle
housed
in a boardinghouse of atoms,
woefully awaiting collision with
others.
Gandhi, momentary
pause, thinks:
What is it I do here in my diaper
at the feet of Einstein?
I think I collide silently with
others.
Einstein crosses his legs,
waits for the next question, smoke
drifts in Morse from his lips.
Einstein believes its all
relative.
Gandhi resists speechlessly.
Even the Dark Night Sings
the Shiva Song
By Sy Roth
Even the dark night
sings the shiva song.
Rain patters a soft refrain
against the roof.
The windows weep in
long mascara-running drips.
Inside they gather
round the cakes
Fill their mouths to
bursting with macadamia nuts
And Russell Stover
chocolates.
Black strip of cloth,
neon sign attached to
her bodice,
she whispers about the
room
vodka, Xanax and
memories anesthetized.
The guests laugh and
nod knowingly
staving off their own
demise.
Her Bette Davis eyes follow
their movements
until the last door
slams shut
and they shuffle out
into the rainy evening.
Waxen image of life
remains behind.
Light resides instead
in the cliff-hanging photos,
Her red hair, wind
blown above canyon rims,
Where darkness replaces
the light
and sorrow stretches
taut as a drum head over her reality.
The
Wallflower
By Sy Roth
A beauteous garland of flowers, they declare,
Surrounds the garden
Dresses it in colorful saris.
All speak of their pulchritude,
ignoring the others.
But Lacy-leafed ferns,
chided children of the forest floor,
wait in the soil, bide their time,
an artist’s monochromatic palette.
Their exiled faces crammed
into overcrowded trains of resplendent flora,
searching for their own earth pockets to plow.
Obdurate roots sprout legs in the moist soil,
their flags unfurl in whipping spring winds
a verdigris sea pushing their popinjay neighbors aside
trumpeting their independence.
Like Alfalfa’s cowlick,
mint green leaves emerge erect fans
delicately curlicued arms,
supplicants genuflecting to the heavens
embracing their freedom.
They elbow the others into corners,
their terran-flagged territory anointed.
Nomenclature doesn’t truly matter.
Just a Sargasso Sea of
whispering leaves
dominate the landscape.
Slow motion time cameras watch them blanket the others,
their colors canopied beneath their green swatches.
The others listen for the new sounds of the garden,
delicate breezes borne in their swaying arms.