Gorgeous Folklore Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Her eyes fill with the cups of trances,
And I am getting things wrong, still not a
Diabetic like my grandfather, I think of
Going to work in Disney World to write
Novels of utter fantasy, for I will not loan
To my parents what I do not deserve,
And still she is there made of naked pearl
Entering the subway; there is a tornado
Dancing against her backside. He is tossing
The rains like the tears of conceiving mothers,
But she goes away and on the tram circulates
The magic kingdom, coming out of the darkness
To the sound of trumpets, her breasts like
Cherry sundaes. There is a wolf above the rafters,
And he is panting, but only a cartoon.
The black men inside with her are what is real.
They have scars of pure empathy, though they
Are too dark for it, and it is from them this
Whole thing springs, the gorgeous folklore
They carried with them shackled in the debasement
Of waves, Mickey Mouse and Minnie hunting
Nubile in the toony jungle, and the wolf panting
With eyes of unmined diamond, and all the children
Are laughing, laughing at what they’ve seen;
And all upon her are the trunks of feminine ivory,
And the black men they are on her, trying to prove
What was stolen. I am there but lonely, a ghost
Of the post-modern, just an infantile notion,
And down beneath us the children are playing,
And bright balloons are floating, and the jungle is
Well-organized and lucrative, and the ghosts are
Phony floating, and the fireworks are twirling,
Constructs fleeting above the Styrofoam parapets,
And all around this we go circulating, and she is
A wanton princess whom the black men are courting,
Like primitive knights drawn to her temples, sweating:
A notion of satellites which will never end, though
She has called the tornados up for what is owing,
And my eyes, like flames, are floating,
Fill from her eyes, pouring cups of pearled trances.