For The Excuse Of Love Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I want to be fine,
And set up to be found out by you,
Half carousing the parking lot with a heron feather
In my beard, chewing on something sharp,
Patina-ed in the pure blindness of a mid-April
Eclipse,
And keying the choicest cars
To give you somber orgasm underneath the palm trees,
Or back at home air-conditioned on your adolescent bed,
The ceiling fan masking your toss moanings,
Then why do I keep at it like this?
Pretending we’re both in high school when my beard is
Grey and knots entangle my eyes,
When instead I should be tossing a football
And lifting weights and looking less slightly grim,
With more sunshine and acrobatics.
I can’t even believe that it’s been twenty some odd
Years since I was in Spain kissing the girl whose guitar I
Stole, just like my mother’s arrowhead lifted from the
Dollhouse pastures and sent in a box to your address in the
Cheering swamps:
Yes, why do I keep on doing this, beating my little drums for
Danny, and you a girl I almost knew,
Slicking my beard like a beatnik squinting out in the brilliant
Day, only halfheartedly waiting for the rain showers to roll in,
Clicking my fingers like a gift when there is no one there,
When the sorority has long gone off to the diner for
Pigs in a blanket,
And the truer poets have all rolled over like newborn puppies
Down the greener pastures of their steeper embankments;
And sadly, it must be said,
You have taken his hand, and walked him into your boudoir,
Like the inside of the purest shell I shall never see,
Flecked by the perfumes of your agreement.
I stand outside and relate to nobody what the emperor
Has planned for the day,
Those things I try my best to make up for the
Excuse of love.