The Penumbra's Beauty Mark Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Unlike you, I have no other choice,
For it has been long since I’ve received such favors-
Or looked at another folded in the outward hymn with the rectitude
Of an unrequited lover; rejection falls like the appreciation of
Open spaces, the emptiness in natural beauty,
The poisons of the more cleverly dawned aphrodisiacs of any
Strata of species:
And I am saying this all now like the call in the dark,
A revelry from a tin horn, as such a ragged personage must do
Blowing against the traffic like a firework’s sparking cone, spinning
All the same out front of store windows
and passionless lovers bedrooms:
My heart is failing, the rejection of scars: to hell what they say:
My cat has been killed by the dogs in the rock garden,
The green dragon is entering her bedroom, blowing green smoke
From its clay pipe, moving as with the sea, upon the legs of many
Sailors; and this is not fruitful. This is tripe,
The architectures of a derelict farm, the silence that carries
On after the recordings has stopped, the blind wonders of
Water smoothing stone, mute fingers over flesh;
the murder is left for investigation until late afternoon:
As out higher than it all, the horses tromp and snort, well-fed
Their emptiness as beautiful as a well-fashioned thundershower;
Though already, all the crowd has walked safely down the mountain,
Driven to room and board; they do not see the phosphorescent harems,
The penumbra’s beauty mark held in the cup of my breath,
And what a shame that I should try to make words as not to feel so empty.