Obsessions Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When I was a little boy I had similar fetishes,
I drew cars on paper, crayoned in- I cut them out,
Gave them names- hundreds.
Later, I did fast-food origami airplanes,
Entire fleets, tricks and jets- female airplanes too,
To kiss at night and tuck their wings under my scabbed
Ear, to listen to their engines purr,
To the lieutenants whistle- They sailed around
The cavernous green living room, and got stuck in
The rafters, the ceiling fans’ vortexes- When I was getting bored, I lit
Their tailends on fire, sent them high above the
Crocodile’s famished eye, to burn on the Florida
Holly on the other side of the canal....
A land as heavy as Venus under the tractor’s plough,
The smolder of sugarcanes....
There have been other obsessions, one or two:
Plastic cowboys and Indians in Lincoln Log skyscrapers
Attacked by rubber bands in my room- That’s
How I went on my first date, and Hotrod dye casts
Which raced systematically beneath the angular shade of
The tall white pillars out in the trembling crux on
The humid front yard, crushing fire ants like four-legged
Pedestrians, and fixations on girls too, ever since kindergarten
There has always been one I have stolen things for,
Have offered arrowheads to down with the doll’s head
In the hoary pastures: Chelsea, Daniel, Kelly, Stephanie,
Sharon, Becky, E-.... E-.... Sorry if I missed one or
Two. Now I play games of little books in my mind, how many
I can read in a week, and tally them up at the end of the year,
Offer myself prizes of rattlesnake poems- See how many
I can do in the period of sunset, as I think about other obsessions
Shushed by their men and the unfathomable Atlantic,
The tickling salts where there are just too many to count....
Those would be a few more of my obsessions....