Lampshade Poem by Robert Rorabeck

It is not worth anything anymore:
What I barter for your patience,
To maybe get a whiff of your skirts before
You go home and begin to prepare a fine dinner-

When I used to drive you to the hospital for
Your inherited schizophrenias- How I used to leave
You in the middle of your casual emergencies,
Knowing that you were on birth control, and made
Out of the dead parts of the strongest of your species:

Yes, I used to jog around the neighborhood for her;
I used to speak my poems nearer the Catholic censers of
Her swing sets: yes, I used to perform by that moonlit crush
For her,
But you’d just remove the thermometer and laugh,
Uproariously, knowing I was destined for the boyish
Gutter, because I couldn’t even spell-

That college is over and scribbled in the chapters of
My broadsides,
The scars of my apoplexy and liver diseases-
Never really published, not anymore, but casually stolen
By the bicycle thieves whooping at some rich midnight;

And I can’t even spell (I’ll admit that) :
This is what I do instead: I lick cheap rum from my drowsing
Fingertips as if they were her nipples,
While I imagine her giving hickies to some blue-anchored biceps of
Some ball-playing bouncer:
I check the encyclopedia, I check the thesaurus,
And I burn bouquets for most romantic holidays:
I don’t know any other words for it,

But that same university is still made all out of red bricks
And yesterdays- and you are not even there anymore,
Not even in echoes; and you don’t even know that I
Still write these poems anymore:
You’ve got something else on your lips,
While she is still serving the boys coming in through
Her doors, kissing them softly after midnight,
But I don’t go there anymore, but still
I have no other words for it:

It was I who had the greater fever,
And you were no medicine for it.