Preternatural Crucifixions For The Passing Of Patrick Keenan Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Passing through a sunshower bespoken of in
the innuendos of a daydream
In South Florida,

Walking sandal-footed to the convenient store
to buy cheap liquir,
self-contemplating the unsanctimonius passing of years
into middle age:

At age thirty-nine, my hair is white and I weigh almost
three-hundred pounds-
I am an invisible team of oxen that does all of
my own work-

As raindrops reduce themselves off
of the wounded corrogations of metal-
And airplanes scream mechanically, welded wings
spreading themselves, preternatural crucixions out of
The everglades-

and in my imagination stewardesses become
the evaporated sacrifices for giants above the blistering
Earth,

I am the pygmalion who celebrates his
chisselled wife out of the waves-
Older wives from Mexico forget my name,
and cling to their generous bandits:

Yet, there is a pit in my stomach that burns
pages from the youngly wounded book:
Look at her now,
After all of her relatives have died:

And the ocean lies as flat as a movie theatre.
She is afraid to move as they make love to her:

In this metamorphosis, a Ferris Wheel,
A seasonal and fabulous trick: butterflies come out
Of her eyes-
And old high school english teachers die
Of esophogeal cancer: This is a poem for them:
To Italian plays written by English playrights,

Unwound and unlit in the fabre neighborhoods
that I have long since kicked out
as a prelude to Christmas.

Unannounced, Romeo is thirty-nine years old
And next week will buy a house for 565,000 cash:
Maybe, finally, the authorities will take him to jail.

Wishing wells in the past pluperfect-
And classroom gods whose only purpose was to diagram
Sentences-
Well, the rainshowers scrub the bark for you
Cleaning the wayward forest of slash pine orphaned between the highways
As good as industrious housewives-
My wife once sickened herself from eating
too many frogs' legs-

There she is, on a Saturday afternoon,
Floating like a cartoon above the alien playgrounds of Shanghai-

And I can already hear the sirens of the dead coming for you-
Though for the meanwhile, imperfectly,
I am yet alive.