Boarders Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There are people in their rooms
Above my wilting head.
As my thoughts shed like tiny fireballs
From the horse’s ears in a lightning storm;
Their voices are colorful vowels,
Like birds singing, like Rimbaud’s
Poetry in the perfect juxtapositions of
Pretty sounding things laid vulnerably
On silver platters—
There is an azure maiden peeing
In a opal vase filled with gladiolas
The little crippled boy picked from the
Newly painted graveyard where all
The dead soldiers are sleeping—
There are people talking in their
Separate rooms above my head,
As a Red Indian walks into a bar and
Trades his mustang for a bottle of sour whiskey—
Outside, an electrified snowstorm is falling
On Alaskan pastures, and fiery snowflakes
Prick themselves on barbed wire fences,
Like candles offering delicate flames—
From the window, a murdered woman screams
Purple threats, as she is backed up
By the whippoorwill’s peppermint trills on
The vermillion steeple—
Listening, the dying man takes off his boots
And then follows his brother’s shadow,
Because a phantom has promised him a
Bag of cunning gold he hid in the quietest
Snow covered meadow
Where frostbite waits in hoary amethyst furrows,
Where the den of amber foxes sleep
Mortally exhausted, their skeletons half exposed,
Like anemic waitresses flirting with time
And customers,
The sounds of her bare feet crunching the
Frozen pasture as she moves from table to table,
The angelic specter in black violet tassels
Serving them the cold bulbs of winter’s divine
Harvest the dead man’s brother made love into her,
As far above, people laughed boisterously
In their separate rooms.