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Sy Roth comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. Retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace. He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. His works have been published in many online publications including BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, The Weekender, The Squawk Back, Dead Snakes, Downer Magazine, and Every Day Poems. One of his poems, Forsaken Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle. Also selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway, September 2012. His work was also read at Palimpsest Poetry Festival in December 2012.
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A Game of Marbles
blue agate adrift flicked by an errant thumb knuckles down no sticking it to the other; glumly twirls aimlessly in the circle. the boys laugh, insatiable beings consumers rather than builders teeter-tottering in a sea of puerile inanities. they do not perceive the two-- the guardians secreted among them-- builders with trowels in one hand, weapons in the other defending their creations. fail to recognize that the world began in a big-bang building of words clapped together like chalk erasers-- those risking all for books housing spun gold with words and keeping possible truths buried within them safe from the funeral pyre. in a marbleized world, their words-- dropsies and bombsies-- unworthy builders, tossing shooters. their great risk, all the marbles-- the dragonflies, the steelies and the cats eyes. The Ort The kitchen table, Its smooth laminated countertops, even floors, if that stoked her need, became her pecking ground. Coops of memory awash in scarcity. No scraping talons clawing at the ground, no head bobbing forward and back, only that extended pointer finger like a frog’s tongue darting out snaring its prey. Every scrap had to be pecked. Nothing to be left behind, Nothing wiped from the table tops into waiting receptacles. Zeroed in on the ort, she attached it to her tongue-moistened fingertip, then it went, deposited gingerly, eyes alight with memory, into the mouth. There are children starving in Europe she would remind us. We marveled at the stabbing finger each time, the ingestion of the bits and pieces that we cavalierly dropped and wiped without conscience from our lips. She eyed each microscopic piece with sadness as she pecked, memories revived with each bit, clucking mightily at the waste. |
