Sy Roth

convinced that I needed the aids
I took my hearing out this morning,
listened as my bicycle took me round the blocks.

brain processed the morning
without impediments.
heard the wind puffing against my ears
freedom songs.

heard some birds tittering in the distance,
soft melodies of their freedom.

heard my knees creaking to the accompaniment
of my squeaky seat.

heard this poem planted there
to traipse among the falling cherry buds
wailing konnichiwa tunes.

my heart heard pounding in my chest
convinced me that I should listen more,
aids only amplify.

Once bustling, rapt villages,
reveled in stories
shared by griots,
mesmerized by them
ancient stories from recesses
of the underworld where Persephone dwelled.
They remembered them all,
and the people listened.

No words can be dredged to warm
the frozen silence of deafness,
because it is fall after the harvest
and the Queen of the shades
has been dragged back to the darkness
throne emptied and cursed,
silence growing lavishly on the souls of the dead.
Will hearing return in the spring,
With the moribund spring shoots?

All is enveloped in silence.
Hearing lost.
Only silent lips move now
conjuring stories from seconds ago,
forgotten tomorrow.

Automaton down
Numb after eons of the sculptor’s chiseling,
She with hammer and pike
Plinking steady rhythms
an etude in F-sharp
Daring the stone to reveal something.

Finding nothing
only bare bones, the exoskeleton,
Entrails, loose strings to tie around the hips
Heart, a charred lump, aortic tunnel blasted closed
Brain, an arctic-chilled, dimpled golf ball lumpily rolling by metatarsals
Vacuous, ice-cream-scooped eyes
And slack mandible aghast against grainy gray days.

Ooobotzz flayed over time
entity drifting above bibulous ground and verdant valleys
Nerves whipping at the air
A bizarre, altered bastard galumphing directionless.

She reigns supreme
A deft artist of reduction.

White-forested heavens thick with pregnant mist
Disgorge a plumed peacock that hovers above
A winged mother bearing her child aloft.

Mountain tops and marshmallow puffs
Fired by a frozen moon
Cast long shadows of white lagniappe isthmuses in the clouds.

Mother and child vainly search the earth below.
But spirits have given them air
to ride upon their steely steed.

The ice-cold blue earth
beneath them lies empty and scored.
Their ocean sky an unexpected bonus.

A neighbor passed today
On his way to non-being.
A casual traveler
Basking once in the silky sun of existence.
Cells once nourished
Became his bete noir.
They consumed him in a gulp.

Not knowing him well
I, hardly a blip on a radar screen rife with blips.
He recognized my existence.
For a nanosecond, and I his.

We talked of boots,
Walking, y’all, cowboy boots,
Strutting boots engendering power.

Because he could strut no more,
The wheel chair held him in thrall,
He gifted his to me.

I did not strut in those, red, grey and pointy boots.
I tossed them to the bottom of my closet
Relegated to join mismatched socks and underwear.

Now that he is no more,
I sought them out.
A life memo.
I tested them.
Wrapped my feet in them.
Stood like the Colossus of Rhodes arms akimbo
And strutted across my bedroom.

Il Duce, chin stuck in the air sucking in life,
Sauntered to the mirror.
Agape, a mortal stared back.
My neighbor would have smiled.