Over The Downhill Shop Of My Tomb Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Filthy and incomplete,
I want to die while giving my soliloquy
From the upper window of an old museum
From which you can barely see the sunset
Like a glass of rum,
From which some terrible accident is burning,
Smelling like a stew of letter-carriers
In a long train wreck,
Satchels gutted and strewn and all their
White creases high up in the air
Like unripe cinders;
They come down unopened over the
downhill shop of my tomb-
Someone is trying to make some extra money-
They have fused a monkey with a fish and called
It a mermaid-
I am set up next to that, probably the last of my
Kind,
Counterfeit,
But well atop my soap box next-door to
The great Indian chief and one grizzly bear.
From down beneath us, the scuffing of polite feet-
They are coming in, one or two,
To look around as the trains rattle on through
The spilled letters,
Carrying dashing young soldiers with gold
And blue buttons along the way,
And back to filthy sweethearts-
The cottonmouth perpetually striking my wrist.
The bar is opening with much commotion and fanfare.
I wonder if they should make it up to see us
Before closing.