zesty ropedancer meaningfully hobnailed honeydew folklore evermore
myriad sunburn translocation sapiently mistaking your platypus
impious prognosticator gnaw mono recordbook thereabouts
(Weekly Magnetic Poetry Challenge • August 17–23, 2026)
Spring’s Abysmal Guile
By Sy Roth
A vapor rises, rank as the charnel pit,
a corruption of a miasma vast,
as though some sepulcher, long sealed,
split its stony jaws to breathe.
Vile exhalation of a corrupted world.
The reveler, unwitting wretch
treads the decadent fields where verdure writhes,
each blade a hostile tendril, squamous, cold,
glistening with ichor
No earthly fount its progenitor.
He deems the shade of evil vanquished,
trampled beneath his hobnailed boot.
The soil heaves with malefic will,
its roots, like veins of some primordial fiend,
pulses with a rankness older than the stars,
a stench that whispers of aeons lost.
Spring cloaks itself in verdant pall,
no bloom, but scales of a vast, unuttered thing,
its thorns a raven’s beak, evermore to rend, to sow, to bespoil.
He quaffs the tainted zephyr,
proclaiming triumph over a gloaming moon,
Swept in the season’s unseen talons,
fathomless ennui
creeps through his sinews,
entombing his soul in an abysmal cleft unshriven.
The Mountains of the Dead
I’ve seen the mountains of the dead,
the worn-down hobnailed boots,
a child’s pathetic pair of shoes,
those ladies’ heels in red and blue,
and stared at each macabre caress;
scuffed patent leather,
canvas twisted rubber soles,
threadbare laces noose tied,
forsaken footwear’s silent echoes
of ghettoes quickly cleared.
A million steps that led to death.
In moving epitaph to abandoned hope,
a pile of battered suitcases
bare the hasty scrawls of human beings
I’ll never know:
Klara Goldstein,
Peter Eisler,
Olga Kornfeld.
A lost property office
for the Lost.
Reaching out, ten thousand spectacles
watch me through a window,
peer deep into my soul, tug heartstrings
to my conscience,
these twisted frames,
the ultimate victims
of a twisted ideology.
One thousand lives
Extinguished
Every
Single
Day
when next I come
through cobbled streets
steel topping hobnailed feet
led by pounding echoed drum
to arms, to arms!
these banners wave
feeding pride the faces crave
stealing youth from school and farms
to strive, to fight
as nations bleed
plant my hatred's growing seed
I laugh to see the wrong now right
again I come
again, again
orchestrate this game of men
mercy under blackened thumb
can it end
my game of death
stealing so many young one's breath
an endless loop, a hopeless trend
It's not for me, I have no say
the die is cast
just glancing at the human past
my guess is that it's here to stay
dream now dreamers of a peaceful boon
as war clouds fade with dawn
years go by, the armies gone
no worries now, I'll see you soon.
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