Rocket Launcher Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Why in this cold globe
did you fire rockets
into my eyes?
you were not the destiny
I paid for
this was an ambush
and 1/3 of my life
has run like fetid
rivers through your legs
and down toilet drains
now I am suppose to say
hello to you, congenially,
as if you had never
bitten me, rabidly
like some foul marsupial
of my lower regions
instead, listen dear,
as I recall the war cry
of my ancestors
Rorabeck is German,
Remember.
and in 1945 I
was there adding the
coal to the cinders
that baked your
great aunt
and now my whip comes,
crack!
as I herd the black
angels through a pale gray
pain of sky—
and as you pass by, saying
your congenial hello—
I yell, “Schnell! Schnell! ”
and you revert back to the
naked beast I made you
and I ride you like some
Modern Major General
across planes of fire—
whipping you lavishly
for your niceties baked in insincerity,
your “Hello Robs” and
oh, P.S., I
love giving blow jobs
now that my jaw don’t crack.
but you are my pet now—
cause you remember
the mastery of my forbearers
so when I see you walking
next time on these
safe Florida streets
with these sororities herding
about you
with their beeping blow dryers—
“Schnell! Schnell! ”
I will cry, trumpeting
us into a new
wicked blackness.