No Good Tears Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What little talent leaves us like a draw of blood,
And still the doctor is not sure what ails us, except obscurity,
And the nurses’ squeaking nouns they but in place
In red checkmarks on the clipboards;
But we can’t help but think, they’d look better in a swamp
Barefoot and nipple round confessing to an older sun,
The alligators like new dinosaurs hatching from the speckled clutch,
The poet’s hand opened like a flower curling from the crook
Of cypress dripping like dismantled swimmers from their pools,
And the minor sounds of the local orchestra putting on
The darkening hoods, the nurses fainting like perishable goods,
And nothing all around except for the slip of reptiles into the
Open womb about the knees of the petrified knights of lucid green,
The croaking amphibians between night and day, swirling
Like the joy of dark little children in a bath below mouths of red orifice,
The navels open through the pearly abdomens, the perfect scar which
Once connected the pretty nurtures with the mothers of their spotless goods,
And I swim around them like a crocodile myself,
Shedding feverish tears which I know by heart will do no good.