Long Decrepitude 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...

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Skills for best qualified candidates
for healthy democratic leadership
on my Ultra-NonViolent
WinEgo/WinEco-bicameral short list
for 20/20 revisioning

During a global climate challenge
and multiculturally-felt crisis
of left-hemisphere risk
of further red dominance
and right-hemisphere opportunity
of integral blue/green Earth-health potential:

1. Commitment to,
and demonstrated experience...

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Courtesy severely receding hair line..., 
yours truly enveloped within morose mood

I (Samson incarnate) 
frankly experience zapped strength,
hence sulk and pine for salad days of youth
when abundant golden locks adorned me noggin.

Now in doddering dotage scant wisps...

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Increasing my laughter eyes full of tears invisibly 
Heart shouting help 
Limiting at my ears
Can't be spoken out loud

Faded destiny 
My quest fades in the deep of away
Embellishing my pain with smile
Held contempt of my...

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Why isn’t religious history taught as part of our still evolving creation story?

How could our great enlightenment drama not continually refine 
empowering language, music, liturgy 
with neuro- and eco-systemic healing functions?
as distinguished from sometimes toxic...

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Overzealousness and assiduousness...

now propels yours truly towards restitution
courtesy sophisticated mountebank,
whose criminal mind
filched mine banknotes
rationed for when I exhibit decrepitude.
Cutthroat robber baron
re: newly minted vandal
an alumni matriculated

from school for scandal
a sheep in wolf's clothing
said culprit I...

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Green-back addict
Ambition is the keys to unlocking all the doors. Enthusiasm or courage can 
possibly put an end to world hunger. But let’s be honest, who need courage 
when you got that instant almighty dollar.Remember...

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The din of darkness,
 The cacophony of impostors,
 The symphony of ignorance,
 The decadence of progress,
 Colonial heritage,
 The empire of the pharaohs,
 The agony of the pyramids,
 The ordeal of free men,
 The heat...

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No Vanity Set For This Chap, No Way
(in praise of immortality)

Modesty an understatement,
when eyes chance
to look askew at looking glass,
mine reflection caught at a glance,
an old man's piercing dart

mirrors my blinkered acquaintance
faint recognition communicates 
immediate...

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You can take back my adulthood
          I don't want it anymore
               Please...

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Dear old she! –
The sun is tanning and battering 
Her skin,
Greying her hair, fading her beauty;
She’s gone frail!
Youth has fled her, and hence decrepitude
has befriended her –
For never the twain shall meet. 
But still she...

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Every day held the promise of a new adventure 
 with a myriad of new and exciting discoveries  
   unfettered by the hard experiences of life.
      ...

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detachment from malignant entities
from malignant entities results
malignant entities results in
entities results in transient
results in transient peace
in transient peace dejection
transient peace dejection creates
peace dejection creates a

dejection creates a singularity
creates a singularity causing
a singularity causing eventual
singularity causing...

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Spare me ill-considered thoughts
and tales of the enlightened sage
whose very basis of belief 
arose in palpable assemblage
one late summer evening
while listening to his ringing ears,
as he lay soaking naked in a tub.

And holy writ of...

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A victim of the streets

She's one of the homeless,

A victim of society

She left the broken home,

Try as they may there was no fixing it,

Her parents deciding, to go their own ways,

She turned to drugs and...

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OLD FOLKS

Gone those elder-respecting days -
An ancient could well topple over
As uncouth youth speeds around him

The Walmart express departs
My God!
Look what’s been left behind –

A multitude of invisibility
A moss grown obsolete
Decrepitude on slow parade

Antediluvian ...

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He left this world as he entered, helpless
On the edge of darkness gasping for air
While I soundly slept unimagined in my bed

Got the call in the dark dead of night
Reasoning to myself it was a...

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It was as if constrictive vigilance 
And tactical resplendent barbarism 
Could transform monumental avarice 
And endemic ruthless kindness 
Into something wholesome, glorious 
But this was clearly not to be 

Neither capricious nobility 
Nor veiled brutish...

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Broken bleeding heart
Tattered torn soul
Mind in shreds blowing in the wind
Like so many scraps of muddied linen
Blank eyes hiding an eternity of sorrow
Clenched fists with bitten nails
Restraining a life-long anguish
Milky flesh bearing the scars of...

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"...though nothing can bring back
the time of splendor in the grass
of glory in the flower..."
---Wm. Wordsworth

"...in sickness and in health/
'til death do us part..."

Your mortal flesh decays
while mental failings mount
and I, powerless, mourn
your losses, in...

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A sinkhole, deep as 20 feet,
Collapsed without a warning,
Around the corner from my street
Quite early in the morning.

Repair crews came but no one knows
What caused the sudden sinking.
Decrepitude, some folks suppose,
But not what we were...

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It Sits There


It sits there,
like the old Chevy in the driveway,
empty, but for memories
of better days.

Days of running hot
on roads of steaming passion,
squealing tires speeding
the road to fulfillment,

time’s road markers
flashing past
in the dancing headlights
fading into...

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See that the merciless spear of time wounds the senses
it's the molecules inside you that stagger dizzily
the ancestral oracle didn't need to warn you
that this distressing moment would one day come
now that it is sublime...

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Mausoleum and graves extremely old
They have not withstood test of endless time
Human love and tragedy long grown cold
Lay under protection of pure divine.

Weathered decades obliterated names
So many graves in decrepitude lay
Impetuous nature has claimed domain
Humanities...

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