Birds Of Paradise Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I’m tired of bicycles,
The still tinsels of spokes;
How she rode away her ass an
Apple, bobbing, a carnival game:
It wasn’t even drunk,
Like pumping coins
Along the asphalt river of all
Those immaculate green lawns,
The sprinklers spitting water.
Lazy husbands come out after high school,
Kiss their long haired sons who
Go down underwater to role-play
In the sleep that forever comes like
Seahorses in popular spotlights,
And mermaids who striptease and jaywalk,
Eat fried chicken until they become just
As greasy and grinning after midnight,
Pet the sleepless cat, and then steal a
Piece of chocolate cake from the birthday
They will celebrate after daylight;
Short-changed, they will wear paper crowns,
And laughing at the dress code, they
Will fire their popguns smoking into the
Rumba of ceiling fans, swig Champaign
From chocolate eggs, then sit restless
And cross-legged, as the living room spins,
Watch their youngest cousin color out of
The lines in a long list of super-heroes,
Clap and play toy guitars, as their eyes
Look up, imaging they have crossed the borders
Into Spain, and that there are rain clouds
In the rafters, where grandmother swims
Laughing, waiting to see her young husband
Step foreword and propose more cake,
And alligators sit watching the sun on patios
And tennis courts, supposing in languid
Torpidity that it is all mostly true,
As the young boys swam in the chlorine
Stitches of the vanity club, never supposing
Who they might marry once
They toweled off and, dry once again,
Grew up impressively,
And moved away to other green yards,
Both beautiful and sad,
Where newer mermaids swam, distant
Sisters to the others mentioned in passing,
As they jaywalk, awakening the dinner
Party from the symbolist’s ennui,
And the beat-red lobsters jumped down
From buttery bibs, clicking their
Claws all the way again into the waves,
Like hip-necked troubadours, and other
Nonsense;
They joined the stewardesses serving cranberry
Juice and gin on the red eye,
The last flight of a poet going to sleep.