My Awful Tomorrow Poem by Robert Rorabeck

All the wonderful scars, they make my awful tomorrow:
Where I have been alone for so long except for my dogs,
Underneath where the world is twirling like an innocent girl.
Why can’t I be so innocent- Why can’t I be the star in a
Horrific movie, instead of the horror: Now the cars are moving
Past the cornfield. Now there is hoarfrost covering up the furrows
Of earth. Now the crop is gone, and we have a new president.
Now Jim is president and Huck is fully formed and has his place
In the cabinet; and nothing I have said is perfect, like the tombstones,
Like polished granite for its time is perfect. The graveyard lasts
Almost as long as a good book, and no one wants to put it down,
Especially the author where his name is carved he lies down.
And I would get drunk tonight, but all the relatives are bound to show
Up either tonight or eventually: This is the place where they all come,
Eventually. And I am bearded and my nails are long, and there
Is a bag of cocaine at my hip, and some gold.
My eyes are as black as a villain’s mask. My horse he grins alongside
Me: he grins and grins all through his bones.
For he is in my novel grave, and the mad man
Has escaped with my good woman,
and turned her bad; and the world
Just turns and turns over all over this,
twirling like an innocent girl
discovering
Gravity;

Who has long since grown up and turned away and covered up by snow.
She doesn’t come to town anymore. She turns tricks on midnight street-
No one comes but the wind, whistling carefully as he hustles us-
For we all lie out here beneath the perfect stars, changing too into the hills,
Without names on books and stones, and our riches buried on our hips.
The cars flood our names with their lights, and then move on down the
Perfect rows.