If He Isn'T Immortal Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Getting fat, driving up to windows too far past
Crepuscule,
Beginning to disbelieve in French-kisses just as
Much as important mail:
Now if there is only vanity, at least I can say that
When I will wake up it will be to work in
The garden of Eden:
That’s what this place really is, with sports stars
And Guatemalans and prostitutes and whores:
Grandmothers softly tucked away in their graveyards,
It having been so long since I touched the flesh
Of their hands as I have raised the tin-foil flag on
Some mailbox,
And these words I use can never justify the alcohol
The unsteady means by which I use to get here,
To stand out front of her door along with the kittens she
Would rather use for sacrifices;
There are two silhouettes through the portcullises of
That silly little house,
And Erin is in love in Gainesville with a man who plays
A guitar,
And god is barefoot in the palmettos his feet in the stigmata
Of freshly cut coral,
And the corral snake is milking his wrist, because d$mn-it
If he isn’t immortal, and he has nothing left to lose.