Contributor: Sy Roth

- -
Threads appear in an unraveling broadcloth.
The being warps and woofs its way through time
inflicting opportune wounds on them lest they forget.

Here and there a playful dance
joyous romp binds them to the thread .
The cavort to the festival of their own creation.

They dance to the long memories
lost in a dance, a hora-tune of diminution.
It embraces them in a deluge of talmudic dissertations,
dips them like sweet apples and honey
in the blood of the martyrs, to a spirit
or bathes them in the bitter herbs of tendentious existence.

He cast them to the vast, dark stygian waters
the wonder of vexation
as they trundle on in their death march following the white-robed molochs
who guide them to the turgid waters of Acheron.

They should run—
run along with the murky sirocco winds that swirl around them
that whisper sweet nothings in their air—
acceptance,
accept,
accede,
acquire your own repentance.

They bleat out the plaintive words of memory—
tishkoch yemeni—
stockpile a mountain of words
the hungry void with their homage to the spirit of one .

They top the tank of their own hungry void
with sibiliant, silent, camel-ridden prayers.
Follow the shifting trade winds to the hills and valleys of their own destruction.
May their right hands wither if they forget.
They cannot.


- - -
Peaceful conundrums traipse through doleful musings. I am a retired educator and is trying to answer his own questions after posing a million.

Contributor: Sy Roth

- -
Adam’s second son could no longer lift his head.
The other smote him,
Cracked him upside his head,
Crushed it like a red-ripe watermelon.
Hammered it into the ground with a stone
until its blood puddled on the tilled earth.

He watched life ebb from the other
for the first time ever,
after his own blood cooled.
Callow body reacted in anger,
Supreme being’s fault
having dismissed his offering.
The other would not awaken,
so he left the field
where nothing further could grow.

The first couple mourned the passing.
Amends like dead fish
lay flopping breathless on shore.

Enoch would have to do,
child sprung from a sister’s loins,
lesson learned from action,
and a city constructed on the separation of
right from wrong arises around it.

Nothing exists in a vacuum of inaction.
He proved it.
Lesson learned.


- - -
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.

Contributor: Sy Roth

- -
children whiz by on their bicycles
pointing at the curious old house
they giggle at its oddities
leaning askew,
gutters laughing in the front and the sides,
pitted driveway,
Belgian blocks forming a Les Mis’ barricade,
old Hyundai resting on blocks.
they expect a whitened ghost of a man
to stand in front meancingly
embracing his body to ward off the cold wind
shouting boo at them.

they had spent their times on the outside, under
a makeshift rusted metal porch
to smoke pot,
read and pet Soot, the oversized gray cat
who perches on a cushion purchased at an estate sale.
she exhales her entreaties.
he had allowed the old house to grow older
each passing week
a little less straight,
until it straddles the plot like a mass of limp spaghetti.

the sky fills with shapeless clouds,
ogees on a darkening gray slate
writing ancient script of an odyssey.
wind kicks grimly at the leaves on the ground
swirling them and making them dance.
he stares at the twisting eddy of leaves.
his wife warns him every morning;
fears saying the wrong thing,
he mumbles unrealistic uh huhs,
a lie that she sees etched in his downcast eyes.
he repeats, uh huh, to the empty air
pitifully unsure about tomorrows.

he turns away and stares off into space,
transported from his home,
to another somewhen somewhere
no longer troubled by any need to bring order
to his chaos-filled world
that had become an unreachable dream.


- - -
He comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. cRetired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now 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 Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest, Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), Em Dash and Kerouac’s Dog.

Contributor: Sy Roth

- -
The streets his Garden of
Eden-lush trees,
verdant lawns of soft grass,
swaying warming winds.
While they scurry through the streets,
he rests in their breezes.
Calloused feet hardened
to broken city glass,
uneven concrete,
frozen ground,
and the asp in his garden.

Cells chatter
911 pity cries.
They move him
to sanctuary
his madness an uncomfortable presence,
an unpunishable societal aberration,
then release him back into his garden
of choice,
what he deserves for being alive.

Passersby avoid with eyes and
downturned heads.
He insists on his reality--
others be damned
if they don’t like it.


- - -
He comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. Retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now 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 Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest, Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), and Kerouac’s Dog.

Contributor: Sy Roth

- -
Somnolent time,
6:00 a.m. a quiet bridge upon which
to circumnavigate the sleepy neighborhood in
its first buttock-scratching stretch
and purposeful bathroom meanderings.

A black Labrador, ten houses down,
begs exit to her toilet
on the corner of William Lane.
He follows her to the front door
leash straining,
tail run amok
beating against his knees.
I roll past the lab,
wind splashing my face,
sun gamely warming the air.
Rusty sun-rays dance on her ebon coat.
At the cobble-stoned curb,
she squats,
hind quarter resting delicately.
A yellow stream forms a steamy puddle
then a snaky rivulet,
hound’s relief drawn on her face.

On William Street, Mr. P prances with his cocker spaniel.
He always greets the sun with a smile,
whistles a tune,
swings his cocker’s bagged droppings,
a chest of doubloons,
that dangles from his index finger.
The sun rests on his face,
full-moon-faced grin
resides there like a lawn gnome.

Little world awakening,
I push my bike harder
dreaming of cereal and blueberries.


- - -
He comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. Retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now 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 Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest, Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), and Kerouac’s Dog.