As Your Lips Are Red Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Tossed away from this, you have made a sport of
My soul,
Even as angels, weeping, take picnic and
Pieta on my shoulders:
But they are borrowing bicycles and have stolen
Little boys,
And the clouds ink my cheek bones
Like the poisonous snakes there at the races to
Bite their lips at the ankles of
Race horses:
And another holiday is approaching:
Some other holiday, while I will take an airplane
Like a rain cloud to some other muse,
Even as I am becoming terribly,
Terribly lost- even after I should have already
Drunken myself into whispers underneath
The chicken legs of the house of the witch-
As the young boys are still playing basketball and
Football,
And some venal muse is still serving drinks in
The armpit of Florida:
Well, my words swell out the doorways of middle-class
Cathedrals and travel down the perpetual hill:
My dog still sleeps at the feet of my body-
It is a tomb in the stacks of rain clouds and purple
Bowling alleys,
As your lips are red or they are brown-
And these are the words of an anonymous wreck as it
Is going down.