Skeleton's Toothache Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Fools on the battlefield pronounce rain,
While no one reads nor calls, though outside
Little boys as blond as rays lead cuckolded vagabonds
On the canal so slow,
Though her eyes lay down in middle afternoon,
The text on her breast like a stymied bee,
The areolas twin gardens snoring, raise like the hinges
Of a bridge, her rib-cage the tresses to a lavender instrument,

My eyes so full of scars I see out from natural disaster:
There, lovers are high in cars in between work,
And the sea like furrows in unquenchable being
Young men go down to still in high school, get stoned
And float with the subconscious salt, every bit
Their mother’s womb,

Out of class: dated, when her eyes fell away from the
Next line, and the television lost reception,
Her older sister quite nude juxtaposed with the swimming
Pool, legs resting game. I couldn’t tell you how it goes, except that there
Are avenues in full blow, strolling nature a theme park,
And cars filling up the desert her fingers trail across,
Fingerprints habitats of exhibit with nail polished shells....

When I had a girlfriend for two weeks, she
Was interested a decade ago, and I ate lunch with her
In the same school, but she didn’t know the lull,
How I see her sleeping in the gutter of the garden, each word
Imposing my smell on her doorstep, but where is she?
Let things play out for I keep my heart in the hollow
Of a tree of clichés hoping to be rich,
And little girls swing majestically in a chorus line with
Angels leaping from the greeness of the mowed ditch.