Tattoos Of Your Essential Heavens Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now the fire dies here because you cannot come:
This Friday of October:
Alma- and you cannot call me, only when your children
Are entranced by cartoons,
And your husband is smoking cartons in his cousin’s
Land;
And you are brightened by tears- you make cenotaphs wet,
And my dreams come:
The excellent angels cut their wings on the letters I can
Never send,
Because you have muted their throats with your brown
undecided ness;
And this life is short, and the traffics long, drying out
Like the unused lamentations of spells spilled far away from
The orange grove’s where your in law lives,
And chastises you for now knowing how to hold a broom:
But now you will lay down with him:
He doesn’t respect you, but he has your children,
And a big chunk of your important flesh,
Like an apple in your throat:
I don’t think you can ever swim away; but listen as I get
Drunk, and swim around your firehouses,
Burning my paper airplanes around your doused soul:
Just waiting for one to hit,
And flambé the love letters of my dessert all over the fabulous
Tattoos of your essential heavens.