In Nostalgia's Brutal Junk Heap Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Yellow rainbows smile upside down from
Cheap liquor bottles
In those retired rodent neighborhoods where dogs
Take charge
And fleas hold circus; they are all in love with the
Gamy mermaid who takes her bath of tricks
Sometimes when right before
The ice-cream man perambulates with his cursing
Wind-chimes,
His balmy vanilla fireworks: She takes all the dimes
That would’ve been his
From the bicycles of adolescent kisses;
And then she swims away, swearing that she’ll make
It all the way to Spain,
But she never does- She just gets to Lake Worth
And then dances topless for bikers;
And I would have liked to see her before she was all spent
In a house of bruises underneath the palmettos,
Their suppliant cutlery that is peppered by cicadas-
But for these scars, they make me sad and agoraphobic
And I just watch all the sallow girls playing soccer,
Their knees in bits of rashes
Crenellated in the absence of colors of ancient newspaper;
And by my tomorrow, they’ll all be sad and hung-over,
Would-be super models, now housewives with their
Elicit stashes-
The mermaids weeping with only bitter star fruit to eat,
Spider monkeys going bananas on each of their irritated teets;
UFOs fluttered in the landscaping, and their big-eyed captains
Sprawled out drunk in her bushes;
I would have given it all just to be one of their pubescent
Rashes- and the rains come sweating- And I
Am a vagrant on the squeaking swing-set in the suburban
Cages the cops patrol showing off their badges- They have caught
Me out of time,
And all I can do is look at them sideways, trying to give them
The best angle, so I might wriggle off this ancient hook
And escape the rotten meat brigades attracting such beautiful
Suburban flies going out to lunch
In nostalgia’s brutal junk heap.