Gorgeously Penniless Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Toil nettled in the sun,
The abandoned hand with fingers clutched
As if a tool of desire furling,
Blue ants crawl inside the pewter thumb,
Resting on the temple of the abandoned lot
Naked for the cars happening sporadically across
Captures in the web of sinewy power lines,
Hollow buildings of cinderblock tattooed
By the names of loveless dolls,
Their gaze in the perpetual sheen of tinted windows;
Visions dimming as the hearts burn out,
The humming of the engineer’s bib.
The river goes falling from her zoned thighs,
Down to the million dollar sea
Where real boys are conducting trade,
Epiphanies of enterprise, jet planes run
The glowing conduits above the docks of stone,
Where the sea is lapping the city’s caving shelf,
But she is just a defaced infant immobile
Beneath the slanted beams, the invisible squabbling
Of the gold-toothed franchise,
She keeps her secrets in the sharp glass garden,
And the weeds which flower like Scottish queens,
A burning scar over her eyebrow where the man
Who once loved her touched her like a blistering dune,
Came down hard on her poverty-
She waits gorgeously penniless for the rest of the
Body to come and claim her,
While the ants go marching one by one down into her bosom,
To get out of the rain.