Under The Pursed Lips, The Awakened Stars Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now this mouth is almost dead.
Painted up,
It has said what it could,
In the language taught to the ear,
But she has walked away
Drunkenly cursing these words,
Believing she is still too young
To behave for any man.
Now that these lips are spoken,
They purse silently,
The subtle fixations like
The vibrations in the resting mollusk;
The mind has given up
The motivating action,
The sterility of thought leaves
The blue army milling in the valley.
Soon disbanded,
The broken boys will return,
Though some may range widely
And follow the private whims into
The breadbasket,
The poor hopes in the lake less planes
Of the great midlands,
Where trailer parks of defeated
Dictions spread out in corrugated rivers,
And at night look beautiful and real
Beneath the awakened stars.