Good American Man Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Robert loves it with his name slipping
Into nothing, and becomes John;
Like a kid in a paper airport with perfect
Teeth,
Puts a quarter in the machine when machines
Cost a quarter,
And the quarter disappears like the sun in the
West: This is America,
This is why I groom early for the coffin-
There are only so many trees in the forest,
So many gifts for young men to sleep-
She turns over in the night, and wakes up in
My hand- I want a stewardess whose legs over-
Slip the folds of my paper airplanes,
Which gives good meaning to my play-
A woman in a blue suit who takes it off half
Disposed in the aloe beside the carport- God knows:
Vortexes and hurricanes of ceiling fans-
Men in trench coats writing the news, breastfeeding
Army ants:
We drive keeps to battles while paper snows
Flakes fall in the long-nosed estuaries of sleeping tanks;
And yes, I know it sounds so good, to become aboriginal
America, the sick white muse- Then you can
Watch college football, and know your teams,
And you can come home to die with dignity,
The death rattles of the heart in the cages of its dusky
Obsessions:
Red roses in the horn of tin for a corpse at twenty-five.
We can choose to do anything we want with
Our lives,
And that is why this evening, thoroughly tanned,
I’ve named myself John- A good American man,
I would never drink my liquors with Charles Baudelaire.