The Common Appetite Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Left alone with a red ball after school,
How will I play now with the corrugations
Tinting the sky,
The cavalry of obnoxious shells the librarian
Never sees as she reprimands me for returning
Sherlock Holmes tardy, with piss stains:
They are mine because I wet my bed until I was
Twelve,
And today I was rejected by the immaculate university:
The five heads came to the conclusion that I
Couldn’t even spell,
And they were already eager because they had
Sylvia Plathe done in their oven- Neglecting to scold
Their kids, the latchkeys with green hangovers still
Swinging in the park, all the pretty verbs like molting
Insects with crystalline wings, chartreuse or vermillion,
Like beer or swans, waiting for them underfoot
As they kicked in the guts of sky,
I was left alone because the principal let me go after
Declaring me a misfit. I knew where I was headed:
There was slick pornography in the woods, and soldiers
Buried deep into the dunes with the real live conquistadors
And the cockleburs. The sky was already on that,
Like a dog on its murdered bones, like a maiden to her
Pilot, and I was left to my own sweet devices,
Whistling in an banished orchard,
As the world forgot to make up to me,
But somehow I managed another breath and plucked it
Gingerly to satisfy the common appetite.