Common Courtesy Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What does my heart feel like now;
But it feels like a long poem wanting more the
Poisons of my muses of putrescent Janus;
Looking both ways from the doorways of these
Awful purple valves,
While there are little keyholes of vision,
Then the crickets and golf balls, and the wickedness
Of water-breathing reptiles in the tall grasses of
Head-shaven cannibals:
I awakened this day of my third decade and asked a
Girl out for the first time,
And she said she couldn’t because she said she was
Not mine;
I asked a girl out for the first and for the last time,
And the candles melted under the pillow of unanswered
Virgins,
And I slouched off to the sea alone in my diesel truck
With the amphibian airplanes leaping above the ankles of
These almost vanished Titans;
And I thought of my muses, but paid to be laid by a little
Ballerina in the marmalade shade;
And it was so wonderful, and it was almost surreal for a
Second to lie to myself and to almost believe in the
Statues franchising in this dusk,
That I wasn’t a man so alone that it was just a common
Courtesy to fail.