In Front Of Whatever Friend Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I can hear all of the Mexicans in a deadly festival over
My house;
Even as my roses have gone uneaten: they remain in the Ferris
Wheel lights of a store that will never
Multiply before it turns out its lights: and she cannot come over,
Because she can never be rude:
Though her skin is beautiful: Alma, my muse- and is worth
Going to school over,
And figuring out things over, even after the stores have closed:
Even after my parents have stopped crying and brought home
Fried chicken to tease the eyes of
The alligator: as she goes back to sleep inside the fallow gardens
Of her luckless man again:
And he bites her lip like a poisonous root meaning no good,
Even as the airplanes abort, turn tail, and return to the
States: over and across the farthest matriculations of wherever
It was they were going;
And it is not beautiful, even left alone and selling an insurmountable
Amount of fireworks in the deserts of New Mexico,
Before the movie theaters, before the forest fires:
Without any forests, without any breast feeding mothers:
Maybe without even any mirrors, I will figure out that I am not
Beautiful, while she awakens from her nest, sour fingered,
Eyes as hungry as a fox in the loins of its fable;
And remembering you, as you occurred like the first séance of a wave
Before the baseball games of whatever birthday it was:
Even you could not stop me from dying, or wetting myself before
Waking up in the whatever morning and eating hotdogs with
Ketchup and mayonnaise before the eyes of the alligators
Or the crocodiles
Or, whatever senses it happened to be in front of whatever friend that it
Was.