Lines Of Thirsty Mourners Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Dimes at the party:
Her cheeks pinched with gold-
They are holding her breasts like heirlooms in
The photos,
I am so drunk I am getting cold....

I’ve only had three bottles of rum
This entire year,
And three dogs leaping and licking
In the salt of four legs and paws:
Is this February a leap year?

They surrender the wealth to her hands,
And she laughs as she passes them on;
To her, my words are just little pawns,
She casts out in the brighter glories of her
Yard, where her expensive car is
Parked in the prestigious concrete
Smooth as the premises....

There is something broken inside me,
As I cannot make a buck,
And I keep infatuated by her tawny lakes
Leaping like unspeckled trout in their
Stormy brooks,

Because she has better lovers,
And finer prospects than me, for I am
Just an old man fishing with empty hooks
Too far out in the endless sea...

For her throat to remember which way I
Might have burned, to catch her head and swivel her
Neck, across the red bricks of the ancient sorority,
To get her to turn towards me,
Entwined in a better life assured....

She is the fulcrum of erring poetries,
The lines cast out as if trying to be suited
For a profession,
Ending up homeless, soliciting on the hazarding corners,
Soon they will be awakened, bleary eyed
And exhausted, in lines of thirsty mourners.