Legion Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There are serpents in these trees
Who wear laceless shoes and legless appetites;
And swear that they know the question to
The answer of popular game shows;
How they rustle and slither so, and coil like
Reckless fathers around the trunks of our Christmas
Trees, even while the naked bodies of soup kitchens
Press together once they close: One is busty,
And the other well-hung, and they cling together
Tongue-ily, and well endowed, and I swear I wish
To know nothing more about them,
But leap the way the mule-train goes carrying off the
Gold in gunny-sacks, and the spices and the meat;
They are taking us all up to the vermilion clouds
Herded together like rumbling swine on the verge of
Some damned precipice: I will join them in my time,
Because I have been cast from in between them;
And I will pound the tent-stakes surely into the ground,
Even though I have no body or worth, nor do I notice
Yet how the cops patrol me, caroling in two colors,
Asking for 25% off- They will get their due, or I will not
Sing, up here in the sky, with the nimbus, and the Furies
Whistling.