Lips That Cannot Sing Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Everyday peels unforgiving to the new threats:
Doggies die,
And pets die-
Goldfish are bought at the fair-
Little girls turn upside down and shout to the fibrillating
Shadows of the carnivalesque moon;
And I have no one to love,
And this is not a theatre- and this is not art:
This is the casual tortoise choking on the oleander,
Or on the rubrum;
These things are not even meatloaf- they will not
Sustain- they will not sell:
These words are broken amber toys who wished they
Had more little boys to play with:
These are the sad things from high school,
The only thing new about them is the scars, the imbibing
Of their father’s cheap alcohol:
And the earth is on a tilt and imperfect-
So around its table floats the icy centaurs, the jilted pin-palls
Who sing all woken up in Colorado,
But her dress is up and receptive to the javelin of her
Middle aged sun: If there was a younger, more vibrant
Conquistador of light, she would have him,
But then she can’t even open the garage door:
And all of it is tricks tied up in a nap sack and slung over
The shoulder to truck:
And tannebaums in a spring never thought of, never celebrated-
Ladies crying from the peeled vestiges of flesh, or from
Heavy duty kitchen work- the chemical pools sting their eyes,
And they press some wine to their powder-doomed lips that cannot sing.