Wonderfully Awful, Emperical, And Real Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I drink tequila and kill the worm
By coming up unsuspected from the fjord
Where they’re
Growing purple tulips:
And dying, he has so many things he says
To me:
In fact he has a list of all the men you’ve been
With,
Or dreamed of conquering;
And you park your car underneath the palm
Tree and go to class,
And you never think to look up into the eyes of
The man standing on the
Borderline
Who kills such wonderful monsters for you;
And now you are a mother,
And still a beautiful swimmer-
In fact they have named some many aqueducts
And dams and power plants after you,
But you just keep holding back your lips,
So that the cactuses bud fatly,
And the hummingbirds suckle and the great giant
Beasts dry up like science fiction,
So there is no use for my sharp innuendos anymore,
And you are just like a sister to me now
Who threw herself down deep into the
Cataracts
When she found out we were related,
And became a mermaid
Who sat up on the thorny rock and farmed spikenard
Alone;
So that I came to the faraway shore and imagined your
Silhouette out in the glittering spume,
And played a harp for you that I had stolen
And was not very good at,
So that I could hear your laughter all day long after
Your lunch break,
And the squeaking breaks of sudden cars;
And it was all so wonderfully awful,
Empirical,
And real.