For A Very Long Time Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have no more abracadabra- I can not raise
The dead hearts of a beaten hand: I do this for no
Plausible explanation,
Death has already beaten me, and if you showed
Up tomorrow I’m sure I couldn’t look into your eyes;
And yet you are ghostly, and you are haunted and
Are made up of all the better contours of if
I had really had your pets; but you are really so self-
Enamored and have such a fresh paint-job,
I doubt I could get you any wetter- I am just trying not
To starve, so I wear sundresses out in the despotic
Daylight to elicit hate crimes- I carve a harelip
Into my pumpkin as I drink a cold beer-
I want to hop suicide trains, I really want to play Russian
Roulette- and Scott isn’t really anymore-
And you and the moon are certainly not real,
And I am just trying to deliver the kill-daddy mail to
The sea, though I can never hope to escape my masturbating
Cannibalisms;
And the day is a better ghost without any sound,
And the traffic goes about as if in a séance of busy weekdays.
Maybe they are trying to resurrect you and maybe they will,
But I don’t want to be there if they do,
Because this is only my job- Once my two hours of grave digging
Is over I’m done,
And it really doesn’t matter how beautiful the venal treasure
Is I’ve found if its blueprints are still radio-active:
I need a good girl, a care giving scientist, who will lie beside
Me when all of this tomfoolery is over, juxtaposed, two
Similar sounding cenotaphs which should last forever,
Or at least for a very long time.