So Much To Survive Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Young felicity beaten in to a court outside my window:
I have a hunch, she likes it when I buy her breakfast;
But she doesn’t like it when my pain
Bares her name, like stains on a centerfold,
Like the pornographies of rust in a junkyard beneath
The forest:
And the conquistadors slipped to the bone, and now
Made the cenotaphs and entrails of
Cumbersome lions, who ache, drooling and sequined
From too much
Meat and potatoes between their teeth until they
Finally curl away to sleep with coral snakes suckling in
Their harems:
As I drive away, never looking back, as it looks
As if I’ve been burned: the Christmas trees came in a week
Before thanksgiving- and Alma called me for two minutes
Today, singing a song about how every man
Who came into the fruit market thought she was beautiful:
But then she had to go and buy them all lunch:
But she left still wearing my gold, and the swimming pool
I dug for her and skipped school to watch
The reflections of the sunlight ripple like blue gills from
Her body leaving the tears of the playground I had
Abandoned so much to complete:
Until she had completely shed me too: and left weeping like
Fire, or other things that need so much to survive.