The Best Of Us Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The scars like tinsel;
Like bicycle spokes around the sun.
I am thirty, spider legs come out from
The corners of my eyes. Do you pity me now?
So asks briar rabbit down in the nettles
Of his insouciant job: such is me.
If I had a twin, he would be beautiful, if
Left unscarred, un-grayed. I am part hurricane,
Twirling, twirling counterclockwise,
The direction a caustic ballerina pirouettes.
Am I so different than you? Are you able
To cease thinking on command? I get my
Haircut with politicians; this is not an allusion,
If you could understand, then you could take
Walks with me; and we would sleep like babes
Under the humid overpass, and listen to the
Grazing of the strange angels running in
Galvanized herds across the land.
I would pass things to you we both found interesting,
And in the evenings we would kiss the twisted
Bottle, walk through the shore-lines of solicitors,
We would make helpless illusions above the waves:
Our sister, junoesque, tricks of our amnesia,
Riding straddled to the father-god; the redness of
His apoplexy cuts first to the east before the sun,
And we mumble two dribbling jesters, and our
Dog, the third shadow, lulling, lulling,
The best of us on four legs faithfully waiting with
The stick clutched in his vulpine jaw; the best of
Us, rambling to and fro from where we understand,
Vagabonds, broken-jesters, or leather-tramps, if you
Will, of this fair and verdant land.