Never Close Enough To Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Scars mote me like a dark age field.
A space craft wrecked in a dying meadow,
And epitaphs to sailors who are better off fed to the
Sharks:
I want to move into my own holocaust and drive
Cars which are cooler than me:
I’m going to work at Wal-Mart or Burger King,
And watch goddesses climax on the silver screen
Who are better than me,
Who are adept at servicing their trifling, burnished
Gods:
I’ll watch teenagers surfing the ocean, coming like the
Spume of bouquets- wont it be so romantic and
Tranquil and medicated,
And now I try not to look at my scars-
I listen to Johnny Cash, as I pass on through the
Awful séances of another day I shouldn’t spell-
Back into the daylight where teachers never believed in me,
Where she smiled and turned away
And cut her hair for another man, and I had nothing left
To do but truancy, the funny skip over the ripple of
Suburban corrugation; and now she has married,
And is in another state, wearing clothes I’ve never seen
Nor smelled on her;
And Delia’s gone, and I’ve nothing left to do
But go bowling in between classes,
Tipping my glass to that green swan making romance under
The bitter swings who never thought to change for me,
So that I forever remain the toothy fox leaping for the
Wild scuppernongs,
The nursery rhymes succulent on their northern boughs,
The real-estate of really sexy graveyards I somehow
Still remember,
Bending low enough to worship but never close enough
To touch.