Of All Of That Beauty Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have become fat with beauty,
Trying to make myself glow with the charisma of
Hefty swans for so long,
I have drunken all of the milk at the end of a long line
Of a brigade of philanthropists,
And I thought that it would finally distinguish me
Above my sisters
And that I could steal anyone’s bicycle and do caracoles
In the middle of the courtyard to the applause of
Those four strong years of girls;
But it has only made me churlish, like an aspen who was
Once thin and if destroyed would have made a good walking stick,
But now I am fat with the excess of my stage,
And girls have been so busy looking at me, I have worn them out
So that now they cannot even moan,
And the cannot even be the wind through the branches,
And I can see my mother through the trees still waiting in her
Unlucky car, still waiting to take me home
And put me in a bedroom where I cannot even look up at the
Openness of all that beauty that ended up defeating me.