Counterintuitive To The Natural Gulf Stream Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I get drunk I am inclined to hear
Oscar Wilde singing of the grumbling bees;
Scarless, he is quite beautiful, though I’d
Hate think of him now,
Or Mark Twain, but he just goes on and on
More metered than Bukowksi, the mailman-
But such rhyme schemes are not good for liquor:
There is no meat in the house-
I eat buttered bread with molasses-
The flies want some, but who are they to partake
In the uneven strumpets, the imaginary paramours
Who’ll mow the graves for me-
I’d hate to wake those old poets up to tell them
What has happened to the Mississippi,
Or that Florida is a fully privileged state where she lives
In, driving leased and unspotted, around and around
Counterintuitive to the natural Gulf Stream;
Soon I will light a fuse, and watch the purple cabbage bloom
From the spewing lips of cone,
The chicanos take tattooed and one for free-
These little things I tend to say with too much cheap
San Marcos rum in me- and little bits of sand shaken from
The webby cleats of deep water terrapin sung to me by
Uncle Remus and his black faced cotton-picking harems;
I think its likely to make me an ambiguous regent for
At least another half hour down the cool walks of this evening,
But sooner than later they’ll put me out and find a place for me
Where my dreams will come soft and practicing-
Not knowing how purple it is now or in which mythologies
I am to allude in, but my mythologies are my own,
Smothering this southern evening:
Cars sunken in canals, airplanes dissecting the friendly skies,
And her name is Erin;
And I’d wish she’d serve these things straight into me, her
Auburn hair done up bobbed like a waitress in a hairpin,
From my couch she’d come to me, sexed tiki-torched hips a’ sway’in;
I’d rhyme to her like a little fish with my glass house all but
Paid for and shaped especially to keep her in.