Rhythmic Tongues Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I couldn’t give another thing to this or you,
Without rum, I wouldn’t read poems out loud, or
Drive skipping into the poesies of the just:
I might just sit and drool in the chintzy corrugations
Of some trailer park: In two weeks, I’ve made
$100,000 off these fools, and admired the tawny
Busts of mothers and daughters in matching sets,
High-heeled China dolls newly made and getting paid for;
Such is the thing, the swing they give; they don’t
Even know how they sing, or what they give to me, in little
Ways, farting so tightly like the highest notes from the chin of
A piccolo, walking to and from the whitish tent of the
Christmas tree salesman: they are here, and so am I,
Because they made it after school, and I am my father’s son:
I get the good spot under the sun, spinning pinwheels off my blistered
Lips until my time is through: I can hardly look them in the eye;
I don’t tell them how big I am, or how many mountains I
Have climbed: I either look good or like a fool, but everything
Else is leaping away, and all of it is escaping. Once there was
Only high school, as white as porcelain or an unhatched egg;
I talked to her in the echoes heated from the courtyard, until
It was time for class, and the far-away sway of mind into more
Hypnotic gardens- Afterward, the yards were green and well-mowed
Like constabled boards of absent professionals, and I took their
Daughters by the neck and said into them like empty vases, until
They were filled up and valuable and soon well placed. Then
I laid across them, sprawling with my checkered knapsack and
Pinafores, and pretended to know about sports, and the manipulations
Of weather; and it was so humid, it was like French-kissing her or
Serving her they way they do it in places just underground, by those
Ancient things just hidden by the sheerest fabric, easily unhooded and
Set to rhyme schemes by rhythmic tongues, or so the rum had told
Me, making me speak thus, momma.