Long Fusty Poems

It was unseasonably
warm for Winter
sun shone bright
cool breeze blowing
but not even cold
and I was
just walking
along, not knowing
the world, as we knew it
was about to come apart
Then that piercing scream
ripped through my heart
heart pounding and
pumping, feet
pounding,...

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There gathered some undaunted faithfuls
Yelling with desperacy without moderacy
Screaming to be heard by the Son of Man
Not satisfied until they hear from the 
The Son of Mary the wife of a Joseph 

Hundreds of unwavering...

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The odor I get The more pungent I get,                          ...

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Like a jelly fish, I quake
It came as the biggest blow 
With a volcanic outburst
That almost broke my heart into ashes

I sneeze while shivering
My mouth aches, as my ribs quiver
Do I hear you well ma?
I...

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Deafening Silence
By Sy Roth

Are they going to die like that 
Buried under the silt of time with it all unresolved?
Are they a ribonucleic disaster, a broken string of DNA 
Deposited in a weary, weeping womb?...

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Hee Haw, I Cried 
By Sy Roth

With a mulish hee haw, 
I wrap myself in my own divine comedy.
Commedia dell’arte path 
For a blind mercenary of his own fate.

An ormolu wonder stood before me--
Trees clad...

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During the day
there's a deceptive lull
in the staid common parlor
when the home seems deadly dull

Stale air, disinfectant and potpourri
stirred only by the worried, hurried strides
of harried nurses down hectic halls
stuffy efficiency personified

In contrast to those,...

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Nudnick
By Sy Roth

Self, I say
Self,
Wake up.
Your ganglions 
Are asleep again.  
Wakey, wakey…
Those around you, nudnick,
Are whirling dervishes
Those who come and go 
In the Speakeasys of their lives
And I am a silent partner. 
Wake up...

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In his final moments
 He clutched his sheet in fear
 Staring at the wallpaper
 He knows his time is near
 
The unshaded lightbulb
 The dust around the room
 Black mould in the windowsill
 Adding to...

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She would undream her burdens, her life's 
Map of drudgery; all those years
She is hardened enough to hold tears;

Her hand never slackened by the
Fusty, hard stone of labour and love-hunger;
From the shelter of her face...

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and under a starless ceiling the fumes flood in
like plumes of breath in February-frosted air    
fusty flu fumes   gas fumes    
though there is no flue  
just...

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Walking, shrouded by the echt loneliness of reality,
I lost my gaze in the uniformity of chaos.
Souls in slumber, malinger around with an ever dying goal in sciamachy,
Rebellious against the fallacy within our Ethos.

As I stepped...

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There's nothing positive about racism
However, this cancer dehumanizes everyone
This bacterium kills all good pisum sativum
All necessary ingredients that distinguish a human
From something worst than a sinful animal.

There's nothing good about racism
The racists are the naughty...

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In the shower of dawn's
Slow daylight, kissed by
Angels locks, there came
A wave of bird sounds, 
Then barking crafty fox

And I in nature’s orchestra,
Amid the fusty scores, the
Sound of waking voices,
Pushed slow through leafy doors	

Then carried...

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In the depths of Mt Rainier fire stirred,
The earth around trembled in dire anger,
As the fiery spirit Elf wandered
In the depths of the spouting volcano
Exuding thick feculent, fusty smells,
And from the volcano's top, exuded
Ash, smoke,...

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We carry small talk above our heads, ceilings drip clouds.
Nothing is put away.  Coats dangle over chairs in layers.
Drugged by spate and mizzle, denim droops, 
snagged over rummage
and the outstretched arms of impedimenta.

The house...

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Expertly I sit down,
the recliner jumps to my command.
The friends of George Washington are here
they come bearing paw paw and cloud berries.
I am a native morning in Appalachia,
there, where all is fair,
peace tailspins out
as two...

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He shoulders his heavy mind,
hunched under a dripping umbrella
of anxieties.

Dogs avoid the puddles he makes,
minor ponds of sniffs and scuffles
that he takes with him always.

He has a pocket handkerchief
that blows his nose
when the laden air
plunders...

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Caroline stepped up to face the world,
Her pink-grey face grew more than slightly pale,
Her hands clasped a microphone of intimidating scale,
Oh how they wanted her to sing. 

The audience with sat with expectation unfurled
But seemed...

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Tomorrow they’ll come
To tear it down,
This house I lived in
At the edge of town

All around me
In the fusty air
Are the voices of others
Who once were there

“Yes?”  I answer
And look around
But I see no one's
To...

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Militate on one another with great passion
the nonperson,
The fusty one.
Nothing fancy, delightful or bonvivant
Having a genteel attitude, but impassible
Vagabond. Loner. Prodigious.
Yet no blandishment.
Complicated as a merman
Porous because of mutilation
The obsequy closed with an
Elegy
Rigmarole.  Rigmarole....

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A squirrel got into the apartment,
it picked a lock with a dry thorn.
The smell of dank fur clung.

We carried small talk above our heads.
Nothing put away but dangles.
Denim droops, snagging
the arms of rumpled shadows,
fusty jeans...

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I will always remember you
even if you are ruined and fusty now.
a Fall Strayed leaf from an autumn tree
drifted by the years
and shattered by into bits and pieces.

You left me with a good memories
while I'm...

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he's been there doing that for 
about twenty minutes

it's both palms on both 
face pastries 

he was here the other day 
laptop in front of him

bopping and biffing
like in a boat race

chronic stress? enervation?
or giving...

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