Poem One Four Nine Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Cheap rum goes down with
Little burning of the pocket book:
Funny thing is:
I’m quite rich
Sitting in my beat-up truck
Watching the procession of ghosts
Sitting straight forward in the
Passenger seat-
Without looking around,
The liquor dulls the pain,
And lubricates the written throat,
So I can wail a little,
And forget the weight of the
Meaningless in
The half opened eyes of morning:
Though I hate to even look outside,
Because you are always
Rising over the air above the
Swimming pool:
There is no one else so early,
But you are always there....
This is true, and sometimes
I look like I am homeless,
And sometimes I don’t remember
Who I am,
And these are the best times,
Like right now
And maybe tomorrow....
And I might move back again to
Where you still live,
Like returning to the only
Significant continent where
We sat up together
And shot at lions,
But even then it won’t be
Until after you have left,
And I have spent all of my fortune,
And forgotten who I am,
So if I see you, it won’t even matter-
You will just be another ghost
In the whore house where we
Used to live,
Flickering like the forgotten lot,
The misspent word in an unnoticed life,
Unattractive to the flatteries of the stage:
I loved you where
I used to give,
But your eyes would only look
Straight forwards
In the passenger seat of
My beat-up pickup,
Even if I sang to you in French.