Seemingly Forever Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Broken slang accruing to my elbows-
Or however you spell it,
Like yellow butterflies in the Christmas trees of
Mexico-
Like overfed tourists into a Chinese buffet-
Across the dangerous felicitations
Of one or another massacre
That we’ve been overfed of in history
While my mother does the laundry again and again
In a rainstorm
In her surplice like a virgin in a grotto being
Stung by the extension chord of
A jellyfish waiting for my father to come home
Again,
While the unicorns wait across the river
In the forests of their own pornography- Maybe
She believes in them,
Even if they don’t believe in her- but it takes
Such a long time to get results,
As the mermaids swim in the sea seemingly forever,
And the stewardesses flit across the sky,
Trying to remember the times when men could actually
Become like gods.