The Impossibility Of Where We Must Live Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Beauty and genius die young, at the time
Of my illiteracy,
All I knew of was the lines of afternoons of
Salient truancy:
I wanted to live by you then, and run my fingers
Up and down the places your mother washed you,
The ridgeline of that plated serpent dividing you;
I wanted to do better at all of this,
Passed out like a great king floating in his
Canoe,
Passing those great houses we could have lived
In,
The unfinished tombs of the business classes,
The half naked housewives in the back afternoons,
Topless and greased slick on the green easements,
Hand-feeding otters, breast feeding kittens,
Like the French song, gifts to men who must always
Be closing the doors to your bedroom,
Offering you free electricity and drinks-
When I’ve drunken so much for you, my liver is failing,
My lips like a bad oyster curdle from the absent
Folds of your velvet seas;
They hypnotizing your with their patronizing lectures-
They open you this way, like hypnotizing a bird with a
Whole bunch of string; when I could do better for you,
Wordless, and body-scarred, young at the hips,
I could swing you out of the practicality, the yard you
Diadem, give you swoon in a living coffin,
A wedding procession of soft-shelled terrapin and water-
Moccasin, to call your undressing room, a ribbon of
Man-dredged teal to speak to us of the impossibility
Of where we must live.