Imprint Of My Memory Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I don’t have no rum,
So I don’t know how it is that
I’m going to say
That I don’t belong to you-
That I haven’t belonged to you for so long,
Sleeping gray eyed in hostels,
Never weeping even when the poets disappear
In that forgotten civil war-
Like dogs who lose their fellows out amidst the
Coral paths:
Their noses snuffing, their ears ragged,
But as long as there is spaghetti and red velvet
They just don’t seem to care:
And you have your own man in a phone booth or
In another booth in some restaurant,
And he or someone else is smoking, crenellating
Smoke, of course-
Yeah, maybe he is checking the papers, going to
Bet on a horse: a sure thing;
And you are wrapped there like a style,
Like a word that is sweet to compose- And I am watching
You eat your bloody breakfast;
And I am consumptious with another jaundice sunrise
Coming over me,
Happening without repose;
And you are so contented to be with your man-
Your blue eyes the tender jazz extemporaneous from the
Body’s fountain;
And soon I will have to wander off again barefoot through
The shallows of the coral reef,
And the bloody anemones will bask there all day long in
Their thimble pools,
The sky undressing as she does; and you will have never even
Looked up, but how should it matter
When there is no sand from which the eking tide to steal
Even one imprint of my memory.