No Echo Poem by Robert Rorabeck

None of my poems will survive;

They are all lost children blown to the sea.
After 4th of July,
I will not get paid....

I will not get laid. This is the end of me,

So often I worry about what you are doing now,
That I do not even think to buy
Myself a tomb,

A year and a half,
My grandmother is still waiting for her headstone,

I want to feel my children inside
Your womb,

But you are hot for some other man,
The playboy of your week,
Even when you get on top of him,
I’ll turn the other cheek...

And live near the sea, for a decade until
I am forty, gray and gummy,

And then I will say to the open stillness,
I still love you,

Though in the flatness of this land
There is no echo,

There is no echo.