Sy Roth Poet Free verse

Two Dogs At the Gateway

Two Dogs at the Gateway
By Sy Roth


They slurped their saliva, 
huge globs,
big, barking mouthfuls 
dripping from their jowls like milky icicles 

Teeth-bared lips,
They guarded the gateway.
Pleased by their vacated spittle,
their noses now sniffed the air, and
like a marching band of electric ants 
they ogled the nearing invader.

Anew, the soppy, conglomeration of spittle 
wells at their muzzles
forming a frothy milkshake 
determined to expel the approaching trespasser.

His hands stretched out flat in peaceful kindness, 
prophylactic, heavy-breathing 
moseying him to the gateway
wraps him in a pulsing eagerness.

A satyr’s blessing upon him as he approaches
Where the two dogs growled ominous presentiments--
Twin Cerberuses, 
Headache kin of dashed wishes.

Evening shadows stifle all desires.
Lips part in anticlimax.
 
He rolls to the other side
away from the yapping hounds,
away from the uncomfortable pauses,
away from the anticipation
onto a sterile, flattened field 
where done yet reeks of a flaccid fantasy.

A grotesquery of mordant imagination 
content to sleep on the other side of the booming roar
away from the slurping beasts,
he drops hands down to his side.

Tomorrows march on and the gateway, 
a finale wrapped in the twins’ slurping,
slams shut.

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