From The World Of The Friends Who No Longer Exist Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Warmed by cheap rum, I start reading my own
Words,
Paragraphs of premature novels which seem to run
On forever;
But they remind of sunny days when it was sunnier than
Its ever been,
And we were moving out so all the funeral furniture
Was scattered across the lawn as if a hurricane had it our
Feng Shui;
And so the possibilities are with the lizards, and the
Tourists are on the paddle boats after feeding peanuts
To the elephant,
And there isn’t anymore need for money,
So ex-girlfriends are now married on ruby red cruises
With older men they now call their husbands who
Make their lives easy like Hollywood movies;
But I keep falling back to the poesy- its because I like
To lie out in the front yard before a hurricane and smell
The citrus on my fingers like the foreplays of oral sex:
And she is a gentle ingénue in her seasons, smiling with
Her tan lines, but the liquor makes me think that I am even
More beautiful than her: that I am stained glass in the gutter,
That I am the truancies shooting off fireworks:
And I am, and I am: I am more beautiful than I’ve ever been,
Than my mother or grandmother have ever claimed me to be-
I am more than a character actor- I could be a leading man,
Except I am too good for him: I am metamorphosing- I am
A butterfly at the top of my house at thirty-one, and I love
My novels and the things I’ve kept saying for so long so
Alone; and I want to buy a house and hold scientific experiments
In the backyard while the lions are escaping down the street;
And I want to do all of what isn’t necessary, but I’m afraid
That my poem should have to end before it overstays its welcome,
And the last of the houseguests gets married and leaves me alone
To climb up the bean stock in the backyard while the
Alligator watches me with eyes the color of her birthstones
From the very world I mean to write about, the world of friends
Who have made new friends, who no longer exist anymore.