What Else Can You Expect Of Me Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The day is over and Alma is lost to me again;
It rained today- I thought of killing myself,
Because my house has termites, but even without a
House I could vagabond,
Underneath the turtledoves resting in the armpits
Of the sweet statuaries;
But rather I wanted to kill myself because Alma said
That she couldn’t love me
While I looked over at her baseball brown skin in her
Car,
And I touched her the way a feather touches its wing,
And the cat had seven kittens under the brown-
Red fuselage of the trailer
While you were away in Ocala, Alma- and I thought
I would kill myself because I asked you if
You loved him, and you said why did I think you were
With him,
And that you could not love me, or leave your family;
But instead I am drinking Alma, after the rains have left
The sky and she has nothing to do:
It is just the same as me, Alma- alone as a shell flipped over
Beside the intercourses of the road- I am drinking,
Drinking, because what else can you expect of me.