Swinging From God's Smoky Chain Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Best place to leave this earth,
Or any city men contrive,
Is around god’s neck,
Just off the bridge his opals divide,
Down the river from where they
Hang the prisoners, the spies:
And Benedict Arnold;

And ask him how you swing:
“You are semiprecious, and so I will
Wear you when I am shopping,
And for the lesser pantheistic holidays,
But at home while I am entertaining
Dear friends,
I will wear better men than you-
Especially for Christmas and Easter,
Or at least truer, more precious criminals: ”

“And where will you put me then? ”

“In some graveyard laid out long ways
For a very long time-
There will be no more time for swimming pools
Or country clubs.
For adolescent, prepubescent friends:
Likely beside your family,
The very ones who killed you and put you
In the graveyard,

But I will keep your chains well oiled and
Untangled,
Because I am very careful about all of my creatures
Great or small”

“And you will not love me anymore?
And will I be forgotten, and endeavors given
Up to the typical contrivances of elementary school,
Forgotten and cannibalized on
Declassified planets? ”

“I say this, because you are semiprecious,
And you either wrote in a language everyone well understood
But never read;
Or you sold used cars. In any case,
I told you I would wear you while out
Shopping, because this has become such a dangerous
Neighborhood;
And I do not think that people should be glad or
Desperate enough to force such a corpse from me,
Though that should be enough.”

And I swung intermittently from god’s bosom
The semiprecious stuff as if the sperm from any common
Whale, harpooned and taken from the sea with no loss
Of man or angels,
Though I was given to understand that it was enough.”