He Haw, I Cried
Hee Haw, I Cried
By Sy Roth
With a mulish hee haw,
I wrap myself in my own divine comedy.
Commedia dell’arte path
For a blind mercenary of his own fate.
An ormolu wonder stood before me--
Trees clad in shimmering gold.
Timidly approached,
I scratched its surface lightly
Find fleshy, dark wood beneath
Where ambitions have been suffocated
And only the braying of asses can hear them.
Below, caterwauling hags,
Along with their sibling troglodytes
Drape themselves in incessant pleas for mercy,
Spilling their guts across nomadic roads
They spin their wheels
To get to nowhere.
An Inferno blazes in the land below,
Waving feet dancing a tarantella.
Above their decaying bodies,
Dull movement of fusty air.
Mesmerized by the undulating feet and the muddled cries,
I sense a shameless overlord who conducts
With sets of atonal rhythms.
It mesmerizes the suffering marchers
Makes them hopeful
As the ashes above
Leave red trails to the crematoria
Afloat on a river of fecal matter,
My raft drifts across a once fecund land.
I cannot hold my nose.
And the haints will not be stilled.
And I, the mule, hee-hawing
Stare ahead, then
Upwards, to the last ebon time
Where soft breezes of the golden trees
Will not sing the Siren’s song
And the soft winds will frolic with the peace --
No more.
Copyright © Sy Roth | Year Posted 2021
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