Shorter Ways To Go Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I feel my legs in sweaty black jeans:
I already want to come over myself, and I will
After my mother is asleep:
I will stand outside in the empty yard with
The cinder blocks
And I will come to a muse or the killer of muses:
Maybe I will come to the lady who will soon
Be my wife,
Or my heirloom, or my threat: I will sing for a
Long while, out on the clasp of dawn,
Or on a gambling boat:
I will sing which is like pretending to fire a firearm;
And I will get wet from the enrapturing playbills of the
Sea;
And I have no arcaded, and I am humble underneath her
Mountains: I am swept under there like a lost cousin
Who was never invited to a merry Christmas;
And I am saving my money- And I still want to be beautiful;
And maybe I was the most beautiful man today, Sharon;
Maybe I was just that beautiful,
As eager and ugly enough to star in all the old Hollywood
Movies of our almost forgotten cemetery:
Where did you live in Wellington:
What is your old address and whose fingers were the first
To unbottun the back of your dress, Sharon-
I want to know the first man you loved, Sharon;
And I want to kiss, and then swim in the waves; for you were
A beautiful woman, Sharon, but now you are almost
Gone into your ways; and I am almost gone as well,
Feeling all the awful copper metals of those conquistadors sunken
Like greening cannibals into my chest:
Frank O’Hara gives me an erection, makes me all wet,
Sharon, Sharon: who were your forebears, and how long do they
Go:
To the saber tooth, and to the hypothesis of Eskimo;
And I swing every night, Sharon; and I refuse to eat;
And would you teach me poetry, Sharon:
For you are my sick muse, and you go down and hold yourself
Properly for awhile while you think of the tropical fish,
The little golden darkling I suffocate in my fist:
Sharon,
You are almost the most precious Wolverine I know,
But I’ve forgotten our school colors,
And we’ve both gotten a shorter ways ago-