The One Who Is Falling Apart (Censored) Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Come to the new land of vibrant filament,
Like phosphorescent moss on the underside of the hazel planet
In the wet spots where caterpillars best transform,
Where the angels are talking at the end of their chords;
The milkmaids are marching in the pollinated valley,
Where the gray generals are waiting in the wooden chairs
For their haircuts;
All the medals are sparkling like half-blind sunbursts,
The little epileptic ruptures slur speech like wine;

Under the boxcar shadows, the infants are sleeping in the cool trestles,
Next to the soldiers’ patiently blue boots,
Swished and fed by the calicos come down the steep slope;
The patient cats who bat at pu*sy-willows,
And assemble the lunar milk with their spiked tongues;

Down in the wishing pools at the end of the lazy fires,
Past the toppled apple-crates and the one-eyed maiden’s tears;
There in the cul-de-sac of torpid paladins,
Where the boys have fallen asleep in the deciduous trees forgetting
Their journey of the scattered kites;

I have to tell you a story of a wooden boy who sold his leg,
To find a ticket for the leprous girl to cross the sea;
Here he is waiting in the green tent for the bugle to echo the c*ck’s harbingering;
Then he will come out like a man of assembled metal,
And stand at the attention to the gray officers’ perusing;

Underneath their shining boots, in a world of muted solace,
The felines are feeding the forgotten orphans in the cool trestles;
And the milk maids are marching in a short-skirted séance;
And the wooden boy is nervous, because he knows and loves
The one who is falling all apart....