Into The Caesuras Of Death Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The work is steadily picking up,
Folded into arrows and made to cross
The canal I remember,
In any weathers, where the fish are all alone,
Where they aint getting any bigger;
And the trolleys of pre-socratic gentlemen
Busily unshaved, not knowing either where
They are going,
Drinking steaming hemlock,
Pointing out my scars like foreclosure
Constellations, saying now which one is truly
Beautiful, and which one is not,
Trying to get myself into a bigger dictionary,
Understanding how to laugh at the beautifully, dolled
Women now who are like mannequins posing down
At the debased roots of the Rocky Mountains:
Now, with their proboscises evenly jeweled,
And their hair slipping down like readily desirable
Women from the north-country,
No one really cares, because all they are is selling
Something, something headily perfumed but not
Disclosed until bought;
And I ate all their parents’ expensive jam,
And I stepped out the door into the sea, and named it
My sea, and gave it my colorful vermilion,
And fish which grew spurious from my gentlemanly palms,
Who before where butterflies from a yet unexplored moon
Who metamorphosed,
And then flew away, crash landing their brilliant quartiles
Into the caesuras of death,
Believing that even though, like me, they should be
Remembered for what they have done strung out and
Dimpled before all of that careless society,
Knowing that even if they are not it will not matter,
For who is better qualified than they to know what they are.