Deep Into The Shallows Of Your Next Beatific Day Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Grab your gun,
And kiss my soul-
I’ve made total of $7 on all my scroll
Over all these years,
Bootlegging in my dampened, elderberry
Hollers- but I’m whole:
And I can see you floating over me,
Just a bosomy tattered caracole over the
Swings where children are moping like
Pimpled flowers:
And I used to cut my wrist almost every hour:
Used to read Shakespeare down near where
The dead girl wouldn’t die-
Crab-eyed, cut up into a million pieces of stained
Glass- I’ve made so many missteps
Until I landed in the high basins of Colorado:
I’ve never really been beautiful.
If you were with me now, you’d be wishing
For another man, but that’s just my misfiring spell:
I suppose you’re in love,
But I’m doing fine- I’ve got rum and fireworks,
And time: gray-haired and despoiled,
Yet I’ve never lifted my gun for oil-
Rather I like to slur my rimes like spewing precious
Bits of clementine;
And if you are not looking, and if you are away,
I’ll ride the giant sea tortoise over the Gulf of Mexico,
Over the cannibalisms of conquistadors,
Over the spew of uninhabitable atolls,
And land my soul in more balmier of climes:
I’ll kiss the cleavage of a blonde stewardess who
Gets my gist,
Or I’ll just swing in time to your eyes as the look away
Deep into the shallows of your next beatific day.