Nostalgia's Marching Song Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Robert
Wants to die in a pageant of 25 cent confetti,
Because he remembers the long days of high school,
The fake knives;
The indigo tears cried out under the school bus,
How he used to get there before anyone and the mist
Mad love to the red baseball diamond:
And now he is typing so fast 30 years later, everyone
Forgotten:
Even in high school people were drifting,
Pretty birthday balloons escaping above the roofs of prom:
And now we’re all legal: the class of 96’
And some of us are rich, and lawyers: we’ve worked
For governors and patent offices:
Some of us are well hung- But I don’t think I ever
Made it through a full day, even back then
I’d fail into Dave’s van;
Or I’d smoke the pungent weed out in the failing aqueducts
Which put an end to Palm Beach;
And there are still some sweet things from our class,
But I don’t know how they done it: How they didn’t turn gray-
Maybe they’re Scientists in California-
Maybe they shave with Occam’s razor, Tesla’s genius abstinence,
Dreaming of our mothers performing in church for sunlit holidays:
And I must admit I still loved them, even though they betrayed
My insouciant truancies:
And I still put out for them, waiting to get rich and
Turn young again, to find my eternal princess trying out dresses
Far out in the everglades, perfumed by the burning sugarcanes:
And I loved them all, even the bullies;
And I’ll cry for them alone my efficiencies, alone with my
Dogs; but to tell the truth, I am winking, because I’m that crocodile,
Never of their sincere religion,
I’d skip the bus as soon as it came down my way;
And slept through the humid educations which swept us past
The verdant orange groves, one step nearer the grave.