That You Ever Were Poem by Robert Rorabeck

So I’ve been to high school and even while
Trying to write in between the lines drunk liquor, drunk
Liquor and pulled back far too late to be something truly
Beautiful,
While I was up like fireworks on that roof far past midnight,
Trying to make love to pretty legionaries even while they
Were marching off to serve
Their country: to serve their men with fine legs and even finer
Gin:
Well, I don’t know that I’ve had all but three wishes, and in the
Dynamos of Colorado, Haven’t I already used
Them to conjure up what my body could not move:
I’ve summit mountains from the basins of my patriotism,
And the bosoms of those glacial lakes, I’ve wished that you would
Have letters to give to me to send to your less ambiguous men
Those steaming fine young men who were just climbing down
From your Cleopatra-ian neck, from your chimney, because that
Was just how easy it was for them.
While you were selling wine or making clay portraits; while I was
A sick and dying animal in the zoo; and then I moved into the butterfly-
House, and pretended my name was mariposa while I awaited
Out the hours, awaiting for you: Sharon, you are my sick muse,
And you will go on continuously through the traffic:
You will be blue and bruised, but otherwise you will continue on
Forever, because I have made a motion to the country into which you
Cannot be disproved:
I have made that motion, and you are now that thing that goes still suckling your
First born child, still whiffing the bouquets of your firstborn boudoir:
Sharon, Sharon: I am not a superstar, but you remain yet the first
Hour of my sumptuous presumptions, Sharon:
Bruised of eye; you are yet all that I am, or, of course, all that you ever were.