Infernal Sacrifice Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What can I say about you, but you are flawed.
You are not the girl I paint in green storms, or put the
Autumn aspen boughs behind the seat of my truck for to
Take to your storm-city, to douse you with under the green
Patina, the kind of unripe sky you smile under,
And cut your hair, and leave your blouse undone to the
Belly-button, the corkscrew scar the doctor plucked you off;

I cannot say that I love you, with the dozen flowers wilted, given
Enough time, or that I’ve smelled you fluming like rich cigars
While I’ve sat staring at my own meager reflect dimming
In the places of your harlequin business once or twice. I used to smile
In my sleep, and give all night renditions of your perfumes’
Sonatas to my misspelled olfactory while the lesbians
Skinny dipped in the leafy pool quite naked one story beneath
Me-

Back when I didn’t have my dogs, and my girl let off
Nocturnal immolations like a fertile garden potted in cushions right
Beside me, farting just as heinously as the devil in the ninth ring
Of hell, or fish stinking up the frozen foods section:
Stinky fireworks in cones of tuna

This is just a put on, just
An act of compulsion, like a bad habit, an infernal sacrifice
To an unhealthy muse; but I am kicking the habit- I will move
To the invested sea and let her persuade me off you; she will give me suckle
Quite thoughtlessly of her nubile multiplications, the waves of nameless
Sisters birthed off her by the happenstance of unabashed weathers,
See how in flawless blue sororities they come rushing
Inflamed like so many rosy nipples of a lactating bitch,
Plump with milk for a kindly litter.

I can lick my fingers and raise them to let me know by which way
She is coming, sending of her forbearing messages, the little whispers
She holds me in, the moistures of her swagger, or on her darker
Days in more somber dresses, the storm clouds entangle her in
The weather of a torn nimbo-theatre reciting over the
Saturnine geometry of rooftops of a pure
And green clad suburbia which is better off without the
Misinformation of your haphazard communications;
The day or two you come torn and weeping semiannually
Ready to give confession;

so when she
Disrobes of her silken mantle, then the weather travels westbound
Along the mortar and pistil scoliosis of elephantine switchbacks,
And over the smoking cane-fields, leaving her demystified, and
Her gaze upon me like the brightest sunlight pouring downwards
Burning up your lies
like a dying forest fire coup de graced in a blessed sun shower.