The Armpit Bouquet Of The Tigris And Euphrates Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I don’t think you care that I am drinking a little:
If you think of me at all,
It is that I drink too much, but that is just what I am
Affecting,
While the planets ride inescapably, making all but the
Bleakest of our science fictions impossible
To get a grasp on,
Like my fingers around her Cleopatra’s neck.
While I was raised in the canebrakes of mother lions,
You were just the drift wood the natives gathered
To make the fire for the wishes blown across the
Skim of birthday cakes;
And this is just my birthday whim: already lost into
The animalistic holidays who if they could would
Fight for your affection with tooth and nail:
You are already married, you are already quite pale:
And I love you this way; and I have already said your name,
But I am not Shakespeare, so if I fail who am I to blame-
Thus, the wind rhapsodies very loudly for an answer across
Your switch backed planes: Until they go up ever after
The washbasin, and the higher basins of unincorporated
Folklores. You are a very fine woman skipping like
Malleable precious metals all across your winsome arcades;
But who am I to know you-
You are already so finely made: And you don’t smell like
Anything this country has ever made-
You smell like the armpit bouquet of the Tigris and Euphrates,
Where by the taste of your golden apples Adam and
Every man afterwards was beautifully destroyed-
-
Sharon.