The Cats Of Fire Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Waiting for the animals of chaos,
Wanting to put on my socks and drive my car to the
Liquor store:
Knowing that that is the way that they will come
The fasted,
Like a carnival doused and roaring in flames,
The airplanes flying low like gawkers: Having to check my
Face in the mirror so many times
Just to know I am not beautiful,
Wondering what is wrong with me while the population
Grows more beautiful:
Going to have a house with so many windows,
But not one wife:
Going to christen my house with a woman named Melody,
Going to defend my house like a coward’s model of the Alamo:
Going to buy a bicycle and ride nearer the sea,
And weep into there for my dogs who have spent all of these
Nights weeping for me;
Going to try and sound out words to spell them correctly
For my Janis of muses who couldn’t care less:
Those girls have no problem sharing the wet dreams of their
Beds with other boys who know so
Far less about them than I, who have sung so little to them,
But are like beefsteak tomatoes pressed up against their lips,
Humming with the ecstasy of their spirits hovering like
Patinas over their bodies;
And I in my little house as yellow as a crook, beating myself
Into the pages of dysfunctional history,
Like a mariposa torn from his sunny house in the zoo,
Remembering how the beautiful children pressed him too roughly,
So now he wallows like a torn eulogy belly-up in the grass
As the cats of fire come curiously.