The Antithesis Of The Wet-Dream Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Numbers join perfectly, lose their selves in
The leaden arithmetic, tumble down the blue striped,
Whitened paper,
Until they look up into your eyes and are subtracted,
And the world begins and ends in that terrifying classroom,
Under the neutral lights hidden by the rainstorm,

Then the next day, in his backyard, I swam in the
Pool so sterile it was from another planet;
It was from Mars, though down the easement in
The canal the alligators and manatees cavorted luxuriously,
The molasses of a lazy day,
And afternoon of videogames, the lungs which hold for ever,
And the multi-lipped eyes which always blink,
But never close,

And in that sunlight of another trick,
Her legs ran so long and hard they made me sick
Like a sugar rush after the antithesis of the wet-dream;
She didn’t even care how long she jogged, while even then
The Mexicans were mowing the yards, and the grass
Flew and flecked her, and made her smell like a personification
Of suburbia,
Her farts like the flowers which ring each mailbox,
The bees busy about

Until she slept on a pulled hamstring,
Though she dreamed that she was awake and adding numbers;
She made love for the first time and drove in his car,
And their lips came together, stamping the hymn of heterosexuality,
And the neighborhood sighed until the pines eventually
Lost their cones and sprouted denser in the borders,
Though on and on she slept deeper in the wound,
Giving birth to children while the teacher wrote
In chalk the numerical psalm;
She cooked dinner in the uneasy glow,
And I watched across the playing field of desks and
Drooping eyes, until they shut down the ride
For the closing bell and locked the rivers into the stone courtyard,

Then I dreamed too from where I lay,
Watching the constellations mimic her pulsing,
Stung like wasps dying from captivity,
Eventually settled into the mortifications of bubblegum,
Scatter with yesterdays news, so
When I look up from where I still struggle logically,
She was long gone, the dream ended
In the blue huzzahs, the Diaspora of cap and gown.