Immortal Ice-Cream Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Women have been looking at me tonight
As if I were a wolf:
Beautiful women, and I don’t know.
I just want to sit down and eat my ice-cream
Along the gentle bend of the easement
Underneath the airplanes who don’t know my name;
And it is amazing, absolutely amazing to think
That there are people flying through the air-
There really are people flying through the air,
Like super heroes, like Russian acrobats without
Trapeze;
And I think of Erin, as I always do, how I sent
Her flowers,
And then she sucked the bouncer’s c%ck-
Or whatever she did, in her independent boudoir.
Who’s to say,
Except I am an independent entrepreneur and even past
Midnight I can here the traffic rushing, rushing
To and fro,
And she said she would read my poetry forever,
But I- I don’t know.
The bouquets I sent her are long since dead, and I can
Only imagine her now as a headstone underneath the
Deciduous trees who are shedding lonesome tears
For that barmaid,
Shedding tears, shedding tears, far beside my great uncles
Lake, while the stars seem to last forever
In the sky, even though they do not:
And I want to live forever, and I deceive myself that I will:
I am a better writer when I am murdered under the rose
Bushes,
Or when I am stacking cans of soup, my throat thirsty for
A cigarette,
But now we are closed, and beautiful Russian brides
Are riding bicycles,
And Erin is still beautiful, but I don’t know:
I think maybe she is not beautiful, because she is not a grandmother,
And I damn all the novels I have written for her,
Or with her on my mind:
She doesn’t deserve me-
I am immortal ice-cream,
But I still have Erin, sweet venal
Erin melting on my mind.