Night And Day Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I gulped the domestic voodoo maelstrom
While the cadavers of airplanes flew;
And I remember the bridge over the dry riverbed
In Saint Louis I could
Still be driving over, but now it’s almost Halloween,
And I am kittycornered between the blue gills
In the canal and the affluent housewives
With their mowed lawns in their affluent city:
And the day is sweaty,
And the day is long, and it is always growing longer;
And the army ants are mean,
And sometimes the housewives are meaner,
Swinging their children like Catholic censers at their
Hips, making me want to unchain them and teach them
How to really swing,
But I’m just filled with the doodles and caracoles myself;
And my hair is gray-
And even Romero knows how old I am- That I drink
Two of his beers every night,
To worship the airplanes stuck like cotton candy in
Ganymede-
I keep telling myself tomorrow will be beautiful-
Tomorrow will be luxuriant,
And I will get a little drunk and then go out amidst the swells
Of traffic and their cloudy shadows passing through the sky,
And I well get down hard and work with my hands,
And pretend everything I touch is running around the pearlescent
Sluice chroming your body,
Even though some other gentleman is brushing against
You and giving your hair a hundred strokes in the same faraway
Night and day.