Poetry By Russ Van Rooy

      bronx.


​The last summer

In the days before the blood floods,
in the days before the great hunger,
we knew things weren't the same.
The summers were hotter.
The sun blazed angry orange
through smoke splotched sky.
Forests burned
and we averted our itching eyes,
and people averted their reason,
hysterical,
yet determined
to continue
as if normalcy
was all we could hold on to.
Before the earth quaked,
before humans did all they could
to hasten the death throes
of the forsaken home,
hurling bombs
making the forests burn hotter
draining the reservoirs
parching the unpardonable.
Before the angry
lashed out against itself
in mutual suicides,
murderous mobs
flailing for drops
of poison,
retching,
coughing up blood
and self-satisfaction,
before it made no
sense to run and hide
because in the end
it all wound down
to a piteous moan
of static pain.




Get your affairs in disorder
​
There is no end.
There is no completion.
No final resolution to
the day
the job
the song.

A chord hangs in suspension
forever.
It's a magnificent
and annoying freeze-frame
when time stands still
for only you.

Now you have to make plans
so futile and useless.

A mockery of the rows and columns
of your life,
the pebbles you placed so carefully
to enumerate the important moments.

All for what?
You can't fight entropy.
Go ahead and try for a few more years
and you'll see.


Russ Van Rooy is a guitarist/songwriter, software tester, armchair philosopher, and cosmologist who likes to write poetry. When not contemplating what conditions were like during the first five hundred million years, Russ can be found making pancakes or playing music. Russ's work has been published by Creative Colloquy, Oddball Magazine, and Anti-heroin Chic.