Narcoleptic Magics Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This time, I am
Going straight to grandmothers:
I mean, I am not cutting out
In the middle of
School—
To join the forest of my knotted sisters:
Who are trying to
Metamorphose into a wishing well
Of gold coins—
Of quartz—and topaz—And I will not
Go outside, even when I hear strangers passing
In front of my house,
Gossiping of tin men, and straw men,
And lions that yawn fearlessly up to the sky:
I will just go down to the bank of
My canal and watch and listen,
And feed the blue gills the bread crumbs of
My abandoned lunch—
And when there are shadows spreading over
The emptied pews of bottle rockets
And roman candles—
Perhaps I will hold my own soul in my little
Hands for just a little while,
Like some gold fish won as some cheap prize
At a gypsy's fair,
Before it ran away from me, packing up on all
Four legs and striking for the sea—
I know the housewives will say whatever they
Want after it has left,
Just as long as they leave me to myself—
And the sunlight creases the abandoned lot
Where the Ferris wheel once danced—
Like a tortoise,
And you once kissed my very neck at its apex:
Over the highway and the strip malls,
Before abandoning how we felt—
And going home to a husband and your children,
The lights of the television flickering in your
Otherwise grotto, using its narcoleptic magics
To keep you from imagining who you ever might be.