Mediterranian Foreplay Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Getting drunk—and maybe its not the weekend,
And maybe I am not Pablo Neruda,
Not having known the different faces of the moon:
Or hung the asexual clocks in the bosoms of naked trees,
And maybe today I deposited too much money
All at once,
And most likely I am in love with the wrong girl—
If I am in love,
And shouldn’t I send her flowers, at least to her
Head stone all crowded and alone in the inner-city,
Burned out and made love to only by infrequent tourists
Walking their dogs for exercise instead of romance;
And I would like to lie her down between my lips,
And taste her like a cheap oyster at the buffet;
And call out the names of new colors spotted for
The first time in the sky,
And drink to her on her birthday, and live in the vicinity of
Misspelled angels all spilled out in their bedrooms
Behind the red bricks and cornices;
But they already have made love, and it is some three
Decades, and I can’t write music,
And her parents wouldn’t approve, and why should it
Continue like this when I’ve only been to Spain but once,
And there with my aunt I made love to no one,
And did not ride a stolen bicycle but once through the verdant
Orange groves to the Mediterranean foreplay—
Did not once allow her to touch the scars on my cheek,
Or remain long enough to say our apocryphal vows,
Did not howl her name through wind tunnels on
Christian holidays, did not fight a hillside of windmills;
But did this, and ran away, slept through class
Or did not go to class at all, and thus was not able to fall
In love with Shakespeare’s sonnets or the female athletes
Who knew them by heart,
And bit their inside cheek towards the better-situated contenders
Who knew all the answers and were not afraid to
Look her in the eye,
And feel the budding soul never fearing that she should
Turn away.