Exhausted Hood Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Come now you contagious voodoo sound,
I’ve been fluctuating around the semi-fulvous
Of librarians:
When I get too drunk, I wear the old baseball cap
Of my ancestors,
I make fun of published poets,
I have to laugh:
My scars look glorious, glorious
And I’m bubbling up above ground; it’s the shoots
For the best tourism,
Sea-jaded terrapins farting their eggs on
High-school aqueducts, and
Black eye-linered bitches smoking their flumes
If you couldn’t tell this is where we
Once butchered our knives in our lunch rooms:
And I’m high on highly combustible fumes:
Dancing, dancing repeatedly across the concrete
Atolls that I spume:
I am beautiful, beautiful And lonely at last:
Oh, sommelier, you are such a wicked blast,
And I’m feeling beautiful caracoling under your lips,
So beautiful I could almost die scrimshawed like this-
And Michelle, I am no longer bleeding in my car,
Michelle- you who are iron pyrite,
Who are not beautiful, who could just about die
To the centipede of vampires- The movie is over,
The dance is over,
And I am looking beautiful to the birds that are hungry-
I am looking almost edible to the cheerleaders-
Yeah, I’m looking real good in my black cape and
Hood-
Though I’m getting kind of chilly because of the alcohol
That should,
But in the first time since the dinosaurs I enjoy looking
At myself, and I love sommeliers with eye-liners and mirrors
Tilted toward themselves;
And I love Sharon, as any good boy should- and the
Lawn is mowed and the c%nt is good;
And I love Sharon, Sharon as any good boy should,
And the lawn is mowed and we are
In the dream of the rood; but I’m not sure how
I should spell it, under the mountains with a flat tire,
To the streams of tourists and storms coming in,
And I am no longer sure if I love Sharon,
Or if this is any good,
Or if I should continue breathing with the steam
Hyperventilating under my exhausted,
Exhausted hood.