Last Trains At the End of An Echo
Last Trains at the End of an Echo
by Sy Roth
The Conestoga wagons littered the wasteland with their spiny bones
in search of the comfort of others
clattering, grinding wheels singing an unmelodic song
laments the guile of the others
who screamed a gale of voluminous disregard for them and their emotions
sucked the breath from their mouths
unfriended them.
So sudden their demise,
an unwinding of beliefs and closely-held credos
that peep like golden hinds from behind a lea of blustery grass
and suddenly there is a no more.
On either side of the mending wall
a phubbing, vacuous ending subsists
as a contemporary shout-out
an electronic melding,
a landscape of nothingness,
of swollen egos and prideful, self-congratulatory accolades
notwithstanding, they gather in the sheaves of like-minded souls
to their bosom
avowed them friends
and just as carelessly discarded them without warning
no cautionary tales
lose themselves in their overblown egos
set them adrift in a steady stream of electrons.
Wave after wave of waves
awaken them to their loneliness
a never-ending unfriending
for the somnambulists to find sleep--
And it goes on,
an unbending gusher of brackish water slicing through canyons
building up to a continual gathering of its waters
building to crescendo of effusive outpourings of love and adoration
where they ultimately meet at some shadowy terminus
where the last trains wait
at the end of an echo.
They slavishly adhere to
amassing their own kingdom
like the king in his counting-house
filling his coffers with beating hearts
and an unlimited slew of adoration from uncolored naïfs
hidden behind a curtain of bits and byte
until ennui overcomes them.
And they unfriend like flushed toilet tissue
wearing unchanged undergarments in a quotidian dream
of newly-donned silken mantels
that stop briefly at the end of the cycle
back to the watering holes of their non-communicative, non-essence
and bid them a hollow adieu
until the last one standing
a last friend blows lazily in the breach
and the wagons' wheels can be heard in the distance
rolling toward the community of men
who touch and sing and play at life.
Copyright © Sy Roth | Year Posted 2021
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