Bottom Of The Bottomless Sea Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Torpedoes in twilight
With the mosquito biplanes,
And the polygamies of ire- the spotter
Marked the Bismarck, and you were over
That like a galloping cloud, a nimbus of ill refute,
Riding high a kilter on the steed with a Florida
License plate,
The busy parks where failing lawyers dine,
The initial casualties who got us caught up in this
Kind war- The sun cuts a dividing line across
The mellowing yard, as if to say it is now your
Time to step forward, to disembark from your
Virginity, to lay down your maidenhead at supper;
Thus, you performed well for your distended family,
Of which you swelled out from the infected wound,
The vermilion spore at first beautiful like a beam,
Though steadily more irksome and unsettling,
A condition of unfettered laughter barking in the
Parking lot as the footsteps approach the room;
The spotter marked the Bismarck, the greatest ship
Of its century, but the trusty sopwith with its discerning
Eye dropped the charge towards its belly;
Skipping waves, dripping with the semen of its advance,
And sunk the powderkeged behemoth like an apoplectic
Bloom, a harem of gasoline, and the young German didn’t
Even have a chance,
But he is still storming through his life sleeping at the
Bottom of the overpass
At the bottom of the bottomless sea.