Taboo Cousin Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I want another sip of my cheap rum,
I want to make friends and stay for awhile
After recess,
Fondling her, pretending that she is real,
As the sky goes ever upwards, warbling,
A not for profit opera I heard not too long ago
In New Mexico north of Sante Fe when
Evan stopped the car so I could take a leak:
I want to look out my trailer’s window and see
A dowry of virgins manhandling my name,
Stretching far up to hang it in the lights
So that steady stream of traffic can study me;
And I want, of course, to be entirely different than
These chubby tourists smiling fool-toothed,
Sated of their adolescent pornography, on cakes
And sugary professions: I want to slip barefooted
Into the sea and feel her caressing me,
Understanding my inalienable needs for possessing her,
For buying her gifts even though I am already married,
For sleeping in the darkness across from her porch and
With my eyes caressing her:
I want to make love to her quietly in the shadows,
Alone in the bathroom, my eyes closed, impregnated by
Her face, painting flesh, making her become the unavoidable pleasures,
To publish myself inside of her,
And then to get out of her way as she goes down the
Safe path to grandmother’s, her baskets swinging like her
Hips the decadents sweets she gives for free to woodcutters
And firefighters and lost men down at the dog track,
Whom she snaps her fingers to make them come her way,
Her body smiling to the fishermen in the river,
Her senses she has never thought to gift for me,
Even though I hang out all night and howl for her quietly in
My way, making a religion of insolent things,
Making her my taboo cousin, indifferent though by right unquestionably
Beautiful, the unrequited recipient of my gift of nothing,
Of many things.