Birds On A Wire Poem by Robert Rorabeck

They make love in the east, but they
Sh! t where they eat;
While I play baseball alone, a dusty boy
With a cap and scars; it is not easy to laugh,
But convenient:
Matzo balls, gefilte fish, potato latkes:
They have two stomachs, a synagogue,
And a pool that sparkles like Herod’s spit:
I went to school to be close to her, and didn’t
Try for an occupation, so now I can feel myself
Sing with or without rain:
I am the chief of my own nation,
Though it is so very sad I didn’t listen to the
Doorbell’s warning, and the way her eyes swung
Like censers around newfound men:
I loved a girl named Sharon, and jogged around her
Hood, but she shook her head and farted,
Said, “Oh no, this will do no good, ” because she
Was to me like Clint Eastwood, and I didn’t
Even know her, and she wasn’t altogether sure,
But one day she will wake up and walk outside her door,
And let us go with her down to the lilting barrooms,
And sit beside her like a piece of a dream,
And watch her bosom whip up something sweet while
Her boyfriends play games of darts, and the fire crackles
The way it does when it ends empires outside,
And the city rolls out its red bricked ghetto the way I’ve
Seen it do, and the lovers swim in pestilence,
Gnawing each others salt from the bone, until
Pinpricks of children are shot into the flume, and then
Ignited like gasoline, an entire field on fire,
And we will all sing together, all in neatly rows,
All just like birds on a wire....