How To Count Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Antediluvian city in its high equinox of
Ladders
And key stones, I don’t know what
You mean.
I curl my pretty bangs to hide my scars and
Look up through the stratified séance of
Aeroplanes swimming in the
Albino mud,
Like birthday cake and different areas of
Fish:
Like letters to god, but there is no religion.
He is a man of the sunken forest
And he holds up the Hottentots and headhunters
With his gummy fortified roots,
Thing of stuff he would have liked to have had,
Waiting for his parents to come home with
Fried chicken
And good comely apples to make a sauce to smear
At bedtime,
While the Mabrookes floated their impotent
Curses like paper jets around the suction of ceiling
Fans,
Representations of high heeled utopias of silver
Winged captains and taught calved stewardesses covered
In tinfoil like hot deserts that burned your
Fingers and your teeth,
Just an idea for a chain of restaurants that would have
Floated over the snow caps and the skiers no tinier
Than ants except that they too had learned
How to count.