No Sea Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There is no sea here,
I see no sea;
This is the body of the desert,
The rich made faint blue,
From stolen oceans,
And it is where I live now;
In the dizzy trail of the sleeping conquistadors,
In your memory,
And the super-market sample of love
You gave me to try some many years ago:
Here the cactus I pricked my thumb on,
And this one has stolen my jersey;
These are the naked declivities,
The changing rooms absent of shadowy abdomens,
The red stones of stolen Indian reservations,
The retirement homes for snow birds;
The corrugated roofs where no rain falls,
While your lips peck his opium neck,
His steroid elbows,
His cocaine phallus: I walk out into the naked abscesses
Of some disease;
The doctors have given it your Christian name,
And the perfume which smells like your showered flesh.
Surely now, I will live into obscurity,
My dogs chasing the jack-rabbits, and I your c$nt;
The sun is a bronzed gladiator, upon which I decapitate;
Tomorrow the stock cars will go around and around,
The smell of expensive gasoline, worshiping you;
The legs you keep unhinged for the carnival of strong men,
Baptized in the single fluidity we have here;
Pagan, I worship you,
Without a breeze, the dead boats, and it feels like crucifixion,
My organs pricked by the briars of the blistered graveyard
Of you, unblinking.