Flying Monkeys Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I’m calling on you because I’m a wreck,
And I used to dream of becoming a professor when I
Jogged around the junked golf course
By the side of deep twilight, and the paltry swathed condominiums:
To tell you the truth, I haven’t loved too many women-
Mostly, I’ve been able to count them on two hands
And you rank right up there,
But now my legs are cold from drinking cheap rum:
Can you love a man without any fashion sense
Or social position?
A man terribly wounded in the dark of a fraternity’s
Pick-up truck, so he doesn’t even know where he’s
Hurt, but he just remembers you sometime in
North Central Florida before Halloween in that Asian
Restaurant joint now demolished on 13th street;
What the F-, now it flows- now it flows- I don’t
Yet have a bicycle or a home on an island, but give it time:
And the girl I neglected by dreaming of you has a new
House and better ways to make her living;
And this is not good, and now I don’t care to teach anything
To the living; but love me, if you will, in your time,
In the quieted spaces between the snows and your inevitable
Breast feedings- because I love you,
And it is the only thing that reoccurs to me every evening
As I chop down trees, oiling my joints and looking up from
Time to time to keep an eye out for flying monkeys….