Friday, October 25, 2013

Sy Roth- Three Poems

The Eyes Have It

Eyes sharpened at the whetstone
Honed to a glistening edge,
They used them to slice and dice for

Homeworks forgotten;
Rooms left in cyclonic disarray;
Reports unfiled;
Presents left ungiven;
Promises unkept---

Scythe-like orbs slipped into you
And poured you into the ground an
Unripened watermelon pulp
oozing red and pits.

They said that eyes had not
A rapier wit, nor rending ability
Though you learned they did,
As life essence formed a puddle
Like water broken before birth.


Give Her a Russian Name

Her skin, blue-green in the dewy morning
As the train slips slowly away in the graying mist.
Tattered clothing barely clings to her withered frame,
Arms laden with a squirming, mewling bundle.
Mother’s eyes green lanterns pleading.

She struggles, barely keeping pace with the moving cattle car.
The riders know their own life struggle.
The mother tosses her in their midst,
Falls back spent, her green eyes a dim memory.
Only “Give her a Russian name”
A scream ripping into the clatter of the train’s wheels.

They had no milk.
One in the rear whispered,
“I will tell,” eyes, a red glow.
She did.

They watched her ripped from them
carried like trash from the guard’s extended hand
broken like a ruler over his extended knee.

They wept in silence,
no time to give her a Russian name.


Balance

Tittup squandering of white feathers
Neve snowfall of them when they enter the dovecote.
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
Anxiously seek reconnection,
Until finally a calm settles in like the eye of a storm
And the tenders can go about their duties.

Their rakes muck at the ground
Where the doves have left a thick paste of that brew.
Tender’s faces covered in masks to dam the malodorous offal.
The coop, stifling prison balanced on an airless aerie
As life teeter-totters on a beam of expectation.

And they all know—
The trees,
Waiting stoically
And the tenders
Who fill their baskets with the congealed, white droppings.
They know when they sing prayerful benedictions to the air,
And as they fill the ground with their gift, that they are one.

And the tree blesses them
with a snowy shuddering of its branches
and its dangling fruit.



He comes riding in and then canters out.  He resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets.  This has led him to find words for solace.  He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications.  One of his poems, Forsaken Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle.  Twice selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway.  He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics. Included in Poised in Flight anthology.  A Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan.

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