My Heartfelt Game Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The airplanes echo as you drive home
From school,
In a neighborhood made out to be some kind
Of theme park,
A plagiarism of sprinklers and
Cottage cheese after the original Ferris
Wheels have moved away with
Their gypsy hearts:
And this is the world I teach in, telling the kids
Things that cannot possibly make any sense—
And, laughing,
Show them my wounds: there is a theatre inside,
I suppose you know—
Marionettes in my ribs playing through the
Beautiful foxgloves—old muses—
Mexicans and athletes—they are going to
School—inside of me—
And I show their vermillion zoetrope to my
Classroom,
But in the darkness of their impotency
They can only see the shadows—
The playgrounds of murder that they mistakenly
Take to be my heartfelt games.