My Indescribable Scars Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Weary furnace reforms the deja-vu rain clouds
Over my head- The green rain is starting to fill the pearly
Seashells so very recently sucked dry by the beefy
Tourists and everything they had:
I believe they went that way, officer, like an entire herd
Of over inflated swine, far away from the resting place
Of my sea; but I am not so sure now,
Because I haven’t had the courage to look at myself that
Way in so long- but everything that I fail to do,
Everything that doesn’t occur to me is sure to go the
Way they went, like forgotten teenage lovers long since
Cycled apart from the orange groves of hormonal romance,
Bedded down anew and well-financed and more speedily
Situated; but oh, how I remember the humid classrooms where
We used to sit, my eyes stacked away bat-winged by my drowsy
Elbows. How I’d never changed out to fit for PE, just read
Scribbles and jogged around a bit while the Jews played
Basketball and the coach’s pacemaker ticked like a cardiological
Metronome.
Now all these scars and the dogs singed by the fire. They don’t
Trust anyone anymore, not even well-dressed officials,
And when my hand goes out to them, unconditionally emptied,
Like a housewife after a long and drunken cry
Settling down after all the dishes are stacked and children put
Away, they do not come near me-
For memory is like a plastic bouquet placed atop the windswept
Grave, and the pain and grief set in their eyes
Like a birthstone in a tarnished ring, the irrefutable calligraphy scarred
In their gaze. Now that I am far away from them I can barely
Hear their scream like lobsters in a broiling sea-
Just a feral thought drowned half evolved in the brambly wake,
And soon the storm crosses over and the waves disentangle
And before you know it they are out again, a parade of primary mariners
Out upon the sunny combs too blinded and drowned
By all that laughter to recognize my indescribable scars.