Bad Luck Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Searching for the right words tonight,
By the television,
By the campfire- The coyotes up to their
Sleep-walking tricks,
And me up to my own too,
Like tawny black boys out in the sugar cane,
Smoking Cubans,
Waiting for her ankle - Trying to find her out,
To spy on through the knot hole in the fence
As she shampoos in something early,

To drink this prescribed auburn liquor
and say a sad testimonial to my
Grandfather, but I wasn’t there:
My sister was there and her new husband
So free of scars and unnecessary words resulting from,
And somewhere in the country they are playing a night
Game, and the boys are randy and they stink of the
Worm.

But swing the bat, Johnny.
The dirty ball’s arc over swing sets and trailer parks-
The scabby coyotes moon long-tongue through
The green copper-fields

Johnny and his cool gang
running around half naked on the dusty diamond;
And the teeth are yellow when once they used to be
Beautiful, and their cars used to be beautiful,
And my words;
Or my dreams used to be beautiful,
And I could turn off the radio when I was driving past
World famous amusements and listen to my dreams sweat in that
Darling humidity, because I was going up to meet her,
Because I had a chance,
But I blew it- The same old tragedy, the knife in the ice-chest
Beside the fluting copper eel;

And I could cry tonight underneath the bleachers looking up
The skirt of the universe,
That it is beautiful and see how I try to polish a dictionary
To mirror its perfect scars,
But I am neither a debutant nor sommelier:
I don’t know how to taste without swallowing:
Afflicted by loneliness, my
Existence lies further out than anything you could possibly
Imagine,
The aphorisms of the ostracized middle class,

And I can only give it little impossible sacrifices that no one
Cares about:

I can resurrect my childhood and stand with it on the easement
Skipping concealed shadows down into the canal,
And spit slang at blue gills and alligators,
And put black cats in the creases to see how fast I can throw
The awful luck,
What I have made of myself across the teal bodies of
Torpid slumber to disappear around the knees of the pines
And red holly on the other side,
To say, why am I here if I can’t share my sorrow with my
Loneliness,

When even those two don’t know each other it’s
Going to be a strange weekend,

And what I have will never be looked for to be found,
But in the morning the novel spit of dew,
The dripping fags surveyed by cerulean dragon flies,
And red blistering of industrious fire-ant mounds,
The repopulations of great cities overnight through the
Suburban jungle,
Who never think to look up at the greater thing and say
Now what is this,
Even as this shadow falls upon them like a monolithic body
Floating festooned through the dislocated movements
Of the ever present void.