The Tattoos Of Angels Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Roe in the lost chalices- in the cul-de-sacs
Of suburbia where Halloween has come and gone,
And the truants fart like knights lost from
Their errands-
Looming on swaybacked sofas and lighting
Off roman candles over the canals where the insouciant
Alligators yawn,
Over fed of cats and armadillos- as the busses return
Torpid as if through a housewife’s pieta:
There she leans her bosom over the dishes-
Her wine glasses glint like an entire ruby city in the
Same hypnosis she knows that she is in;
The night blooming jasmine perfuming outside her
Window, a odor only the Mexican lawn-boy
Smells,
Leftover there for too much liquor and cards-
Splaying shirtless- cicadas shedding in his nipples,
The lightning revealing a zoetrope across his abdomen-
His shoulders display the tattoos of angels
And girls he left behind across so many yards
As he leapt wishing across the borders into places
He knew he could never belong.