Million Miles Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The airplanes are as ungrateful as the muses I
Line-up my prisoners for,
And fire like letting go the vermilion swans of roman
Candles,
Like touching myself in the carport of exegesis,
The lightning fountains of DH Lawrence, happening outside
Of these venal professions.
Aren’t all the planets going away then, turning on themselves,
But divorcing from their sororities,
Like moving into empty houses down streets of verdant rivers;
And all of this I am saying is just a plague of alcohol,
The piss stains tremulous like ripe plums before
The coming weathers;
And Sharon has a child and lives in the early speed of the
Racetracks of those mountains.
They rise up and collect the weathers around her, and all that she
Has been doing, the tourists pressing up and queuing like
Green flames around windmills,
And soon nothing will be able to stop her, and all I have been saying
Will be but the remnants of a sound that never heard an answer,
The last of my gray hairs carried up the chimney and into the
Night so blinded by the senses and the thunders of the more
Genius instruments, touching her all over like tight jockeys cropping
Their sure-fire racehorses,
That I will have lost the last of my voice, making impotent
My once virile magic tricks, turning the school buses into the illusions
Of a comely desert, turning around and around before themselves
Even though their children are sleeping a million miles away.