Salty, Salty Poem by Alexander Roussel

Salty, Salty



Crystalline tower –
Has the hour already come?
White, grainy pillar –
Sodium chloride monument,
Rock salt lady,
Ms. Lot,
What’d you look back for?
Running, running into the dry
And crunching grasslands –
Break-neck sprint into the wilds,
No time to pack, family in tow.
Don’t look back! Don’t turn around!
One simple rule – ignored.
Zip – boom – bam!
Rock salt woman,
Salty, salty –

If your salt has lost its flavor –
If that salt ain’t no longer salty –
What now? What now?
Throw-out that salt and get some new seasoning!


Lot gives his wife a long lick ‘cross the cheek goodbye,
Salty, salty –
Sheds an ocean water tear, and the family is off.
Into the wilderness –
Running, running from the firebomb, sizzle and pop
That once was those twin, damned cities.

Tears of generations run-together,
Pool together – until,
Until a pond, lake, bay, gulf, ocean of salty brine is cried-out.
Tears sobbed from tired eyes feed the ocean of lamentations,
Great body of stormy liquid, thrashing – moving,
Waves bashing, crashing – growing like the numbers of the tribes who
Cried the first salt droplets from red-tinged eyes.

Sea foam –
Riding atop deep, dark centuries of troubled times part –
Separate, divide in two.
With a thunderous heave – the sea cleaves into halves,
Left – and right,
The path,
Muddy and narrow cuts like a brown scar through the screaming blue!
Old man in tattered cloth stands on dusty rock at the edge of wasteland and waters –


Two kinds of salty wildernesses –
One with no water in sight,
The other, with nothing but.

Sky-boom thunderclap drives the tribe onward toward freedom –
Move it! Move it!
Through the narrow way – past the watery canyon lies your salvation!
All of it is necessary to get the message across – stumble around the parched salt flats,
Then rush across the muddy rut through the sea floor – all of it necessary.

Old man beckons the tribe move it – move it!
Old man warns of what hesitation and fear will bring.
The glint of chariots can be seen far behind on the horizon –
The dull thud, thud, stomping of horses…
With a shaky hand Old man wipes beads of sweat from his wrinkled forehead.
Move it! Move it! He yelps.

Salty, salty –
Full of sweat and tears,
Who ever promised you the path would be one
Of only cool breezes and fresh spring waters?

The narrow path – the narrow path is full of sweat and tears,
But the end result is life with definite course – free of eternal fears.

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Alexander Roussel

Alexander Roussel

Lafayette, Louisiana
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