Know Thyself Poem by Robert Rorabeck

New scars jig to the front of the line
Like flamenco dancing:
On good days I’m Sylvia Plath, hardcore,
Yet to be distinguished by the mother-brain of
Housewives pulsing in New York City….
I sit and imagine her decked out in red and
White plaid like a slender picnic table.
Sometimes I eat watermelons I thieve from peoples’
Yards and abutments (I am not proud) . And then
On bad-days storms, shadowy prominence.
I wear a mask and suck in kiln-blown glass
Like stars, and the cockleburs off dogs and dunes
- I am Anne Sexton,
Or Maggie Piecrust- My poetry works thirty percent
Of the time, but I am not genius enough to sashay
Into madness- The worst I can do is buy a house in
Suburbia, a pool, two kids and a swing-set;
To see Mickey Mouse from the jewel-green yard
And wave to him over the road kill and
Heavy trucks, but I might be entering a doctoral program
Instead to read more Russian authors than Mark Twain:
Then secretly at night I can put on for them,
Plays with paper snowflakes, the gentleness of pantomimes:
All the little girls and their ladies,
Through the divine narcissism I worship while lesbians
Belly-flop in the pool like golden fish,
And I get to know myself.