Sy Roth- Two Poems

An Asp Lusts

Fall’s smells fall under a frigid sun.

Crisp air glides along ruffling the fallen leaves

Rides them like a surfer aloft on a wave.

The wind waves a farewell to once fulsome trees,

Weep of an impending sleep.

All gathered at the dance,

Brushed and content in the hokum of their lives,

They revel in the gift of an early-morning tryst.

Arms uplifted in a Freitag stretch,

They lust for toothpaste at the local CVS

And morning Star headlines,

And the Chiron-streamed news on Fox warning of fiscal cliffs,

Isis Caliphates

And slithering, saturnine, sand castles that beckon them.

Somewhere she dies alone

Last words a muffled scream,

Hair splayed like bloody splatter on her morning pillow.

A cacophony of brooding silence follows.

He meets the crisp morning,

Mother’s ruby-luscious lips fresh on his mind.

An asp slithers in a frozen garden,

Sibilates a silent message.

He runs his tongue over his sandpaper teeth and spits at the world.

A loudspeaker slices the glaciated, silent halls.

She assuages the Gorgon-headed storm,

Shoos the insistent boogieman that conjoins them in his inferno 

My Laugh Growled

My laugh growled.

She wiped it clean with her magic eraser.  

Once called a happy idiot.

Smile tattooed by an artist

With broad brush strokes

Thick glob of black ink

At the end of his hake.

Sweeping, swift grin

Once curled at the edges

hung like a string Christmas bulbs

In long sweeping arches.

Feathered ends twitched in amusement.

Now in Schnauzer growls

Yips ,

Teeth bared,

Yelping displeasure.  

Anonymity sought among the racks

Wrapped in polyester laughs

And combed cotton guffaws

Amid gleeful shrieks of uncovery

In a twill and cottony flea market.  

Set there like a Greek statue

In ancient repose

noseless,

tightlipped,

fig-leaf crushed  

Lost in a cloud of silence,

a shroud.