To Feel A Bend Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If you read me,
Touch my flesh.
I am a lonely goldfish in its
Mortal bag underneath the moon,
Which is outside
Of society,
Society that is a used car,
A nuclear epoch:
I try to kiss ladies over the flats of
Impatiens,
Cheap flowers that have no smell:
You can get eighteen for eight dollars
Where I work thirteen hour shifts
Seven days a week:
I have enough money saved to buy a
House outright:
I have enough money saved to buy a
Wife,
But I don’t:
I just keep moving on, like a crypt orchid
Mythology hungry in the surf,
Saturnine and floating with the bleached
Orchids;
And I don’t even know the Christian names
Of enough saints or monsters to
Make it right;
And all I can give you is the names of my
Two muses,
Like fists, like business cards,
But they are insouciant, and hung over from
Their beauty,
So they don’t care if I am writing to you of
Them tonight,
Because they are both strung out in their
Beds of husbands and
Heavy men,
And their lives flow like rivers as smooth
As pure silver
That has never had to feel a bend….