Tremblors
By Sy Roth
They could feel it
Creeping beneath their feet,
Messaging their sole
Sending tremblors
Up into their thigh
Had to put a stop to its progress
Fearful that ecstasy might make a break
Through their pates.
It did have a song in it
Song of enslavement--
Dwarves marching somewhere
From deep in the mines
With a yo heave ho
It’s off to work we go
A siren’s melody.
A pandemic spread horizontally
A tremblor horizontal
Infects those close by
As they watch the others twitch,
St. Vitus dance to a greater god.
They shuffle lopsidedly
And you shuffle lopsidedly
And the buildings offer no anchor
As they lopsidedly cavort in congress
With you
And they
And them
To the imagined entities.
Who knows what to call them,
The voiceless horde who will bend
Ultimately break and become one with the earth?
Silent tremblors beneath the swelling mounds
A corpse gas feeding the air with their fading.
But there’s no one left to smell them
Except the birds that borne aloft
Move the air languidly around them
The species below a fetid remembrance
That would not pay heed to the tremblors.
Seen from the bruised sheets
the two open mouths of her shoes
(one face down and drunk
the other lopsidedly agape)
speak to him in groans and murmurs.
Her face smudges the glass
in the bathroom mirror;
she is squeezed into a jar of light.
Headlights strafe the curtains.
Her dress still clings
to the oily surface
of a hump-backed chair.
Her bright red plastic pocketbook
under its legs, dull now
in the dawn glimmer.
He hears waves crash
in an empty wine bottle.
She walks back into the room
her white slip dips into hips.
She is looking through walls
all the way to a small grave.
While she slept
her body dreamt of this
the night rowed her there
on a black tide.
Now on lights shoreline
she will not look at him.
She leaves quickly
before empty words
founder them both.
Behold a world from green to gold
It's bold to assume It was foretold
Little sprinkles in my coffee mug
Maybe I'm a little smug but I'm snug
Autumn's lullaby wraps me in a hug
Viola strings on the floor
Covered in tap water gore
Nature's sweat one might fret
Patchwork quits frayed I know guilt
Another day with my cloud brother
Floating lazily and lopsidedly crazily
Predawn fog has my mind acting hazily
From the window I behold
A world from green to gold
And my heart sings
Of tap water on viola strings
Nature has painted you
a moldy shade of green;
and you're the ugliest
scarecrow I've ever seen.
A grotesque effigy
in the image of man,
you're a collage of rags
on a rusty tin can.
Stuffing has fallen out
of your disheveled clothes,
and you hang deflated;
drooped in a ghoulish pose.
You seem so comical;
like a crazed circus clown
that's skewed lopsidedly;
and about to fall down.
You have a sad-sack face
too depressing for words;
and yet, the crops are safe;
and there's no sign of birds.