The Best Men Die Where The Best Ghosts Live Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I am so thoroughly ruined.
Two year old scars darkening under the
Sunlight as it waves goodbye-
My heart’s fealty the strange tricks of the
Two edged dagger:
I kick cans into midnight, loiter around
Graveyards, just me and stray cats-
I have no children to mourn me, no words
Which could live the two weeks of a monarch
Butterfly’s migration into the deep forests of
Mexico:
Girls I’ve loved have new cars and husbands,
Or they live in such beauty that it reflects their
Own nature back to them all day long
While they sell things like spirits to be imbibed:
I am thoroughly wrecked with my dogs-
They despoil my bed.
I am not their master. I haven’t bought a new
Pair of jeans in close to ten years;
Her eyes never fall sideways for extended
Amounts of time to study mine;
I never sit anymore near a newly wed in a fast
Escaping car- I never did. Nor do
I sit and study in class anymore; nor do
I teach it- I just keep up the survival tricks, the
Little batwing hinges that get me through the literate
Ditches- Pass me through one more swelter,
Like a store brand Eucharist until all the girls are married
And turned into doves. The crocodile
Comes and offers me a ride to the other side of the
Canal where there is poisoned holly and presocratic professors
Still believing what they choose,
And paper airplanes with their noses smashed,
And the centerfold stewardesses with their plastics bruised.
I take the ride- Let the minnows of the minutiae world
Nibble my toes that are like careless rudders.
There is no rush- Eventually, I will never get there.