Some Poems
A Stolen Memory
A Mirthful Chorus
By Sy Roth
We surrounded him
Asked to let go.
She stared at the misshapen face,
Unshaven sandpapery skin
Eyelids a tabula rasa
Fluttery sere skin
And we could see the humor blossoming in his ending.
He would enjoy her singing.
Bent over him, her breath a morning gust of air
Drifted across his face.
She sang him Old Man River
As he lay dying,
At least the first verse,
Loud enough, she hoped, to wake the dead.
They stood transfixed
And smiling,
She invoking the spirit of Robeson
Hoping to steal his baritone dirge
Suck it into her whole—
White-haired matron singing:
“That ole man ribber
He mus' know sumpin'”
She began
“But don't say nuthin',
He jes' keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along.”
She warbled.
A moment’s pause as they gathered their thoughts.
While the second verse escaped her,
She hummed it instead
Expecting him to waken and fill in the missing verses.
Lips inches away from his eyes
Her breath only an Oreo-memory away.
They were prompted to join her
Her arm a swirling carousel
Pointer finger aloft circling, their signal--
“You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' racket wid pain,
Tote dat barge!
Lif' dat bale!”
They mouthed in unison
A chorus of kindred words for her and him
And smiled their best Caucasoid Porgy and Bess.
Only, he met them with his silence.
Ashen ghost of the man
Head set against the white, sodden pillow
Hissed his last.
But they sang him their dirge
And filled his room with their laughter--
“Ah gits weary
An' sick of tryin'
Ah'm tired of livin'
An' skeered of dyin',
But ol' man river,
He jes'keeps rolling' along.”
No tears immersed them in the absurd.
They just kept rolling along
Cheerful for their last serenade.
A Mournful Awakening
by Sy Roth
Sleep’s voluble accompaniment,
A C-Pap cello out-of-tune,
lazes restively like a disturbed sleeping hound
usurping the quiet of the bedroom.
The night set adrift on its tidal waves.
Squeaky crawls the moon’s light
Slap-dashing against dappled Mickey Mouse sheets,
cracking through window chinks
skritching raccoons seeking entrance.
Horns bleat somewhere in inky refrain--
town criers bellow news to a somnolent brain.
Morning options lift a truncated sleep
the ceiling ablaze with promises unkept
traipse from eyes cemented closed with a.m.’s glue.
Clinkety-clank of Sir Gawain’s armor heard plaintive
wrestles mightily into the room
and empties Lethe’ dreams from the brain.
Feet flop like pimpled pancakes ready for turning
to the cold floor.
Crawly insects text the day--
chopping them into frenzied scrawled brevities
tattooing them onto their sloughing skin.
Morn readies itself to mourn another day.
My Umshlagplatz
By Sy Roth
OK, so where does the story begin?
My option I suppose.
I could start with a note of victory,
The victory of having overcome adversity
And rising to the top of the pile.
But, of course, that would simply be bull.
Instead I choose to start with the nadir,
Thinking perhaps that it would be far more engaging
Perhaps it might help to point out that we all have a choice.
So, this is where I choose to begin---
With the image of a man running away
Finding safety somewhere else
Perhaps not safety entirely
But certainly, away from a point of origin
That was or could have been his demise.
My tsunami.
A bit of melodrama never hurt anything,
Right?
Indulge me as I mount the steed
And hurtle over the reality
To spawn the creation of something
As I struggle not too mightily with the truth.
Ghostly images of an old non-digitalized film
Rocketed a steady stream of images
Of shrunken men and women who had acceded to their victors
Their right to exits
To make them bereft of a place on this planet.
I watched them in their umshlagplatz eat their wishes,
Wait out the victors
To cipher out their place in the grand scheme that was being played out
With their flesh and their frozen minds.
I see them in my mind’s eye
The family gathered in their placed on the ground
Surrounded by baying dogs
And shouted, spitting hatred iterated like a broken record
A flapping, broken filmstrip nipping at their collective unconscious--
Waiting.
So this story begins with the distant pop, pop, pop
Of imagination and the burden of parents who survived
While their siblings were immolated and erased from memory
And I sit there among those spilled dreams of family,
Working diligently to erase the knowledge of being a victim.
But they invade my thoughts and I struggle to make them less voluble.
From them,
Their screams were a silent film,
The reality to powerful to voice
To bring heads to thank the heavens,
Only chagrin.
The now wrapped in shiny gift wrap
And wonderment at having survived,
Yearning that the new generation
Does not hear the pop, pop, pop of annihilation.
But, my choice,
Fully expecting only be warding off the inevitable.
Original photography by Robert Sundheimer with his permission
Her Riant Eyes
By Sy Roth
Bedeviled by the finger pointers
She stood slouched against the red-brick ruins.
They saw a blankness
But her riant eyes spoke of other things.
Her eyes marshalled their energy
As they passed her by.
In their ambling to nowhere, she saw their decrepitude
And the swollen egos, flabby globs overhanging their belts.
Her rods and cones, stood in military parade rest behind her heavy lids
In a colorful array, arranging themselves
With their rigid shoulders and tucked, droopy chins
Marching in goose-stepping cadence, gliding to the music of the street.
And the wind whispered her trials
In soft susurrations of heated breath.
In her ears, the tintinnabulations of bells
Caroling dirges in the darkened spaces of their lives.
Their deus ex machina machinations
Could not stifle her riant eyes
When she swept away from wall
To step off the curb.
She last-stared at a blue sky
Closed her eyes and whispered
Shema to the bleating horns of traffic
That gasped but did not grasp her goodbye.
Copyright © Sy Roth | Year Posted 2021
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem.
Please
Login
to post a comment