The Better Futures Of More Illiterate Men Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My aunts have scars and
So do I, so,
I am going to buy a house-
Not the one I wanted,
No desert, hummingbirds, or sea:
The Mississippi will be the great muddy
Ribbon she misplaced outside my door
So many years ago,
So many classes spent gasping like a fish
Selfishly out on the precipice,
Far above the shopping malls, with not
A blue mountain lion around for
So many aphorisms:

My clock stopped six years ago,
These scars on my cheeks, the heat-
Stroked Eskimos: She really did me in,
The secular pugilist whom I didn’t really love;
She married a lawyer back against the tall
And burnished shore where we once
Made love like sea-turtles;
Until the raven ate our egg, nevermore:
Yes, she really stopped me,
And the Mormon boys made sweet fun of me
Down in New Mexico when we were selling fireworks
For my father,
While I dreamed of forest fires sweeping over sweet mountains:

Now this,
Another turn on the merry-go-round, a lash of liquor,
A brighter hunting cap and catcher’s glove
And I am going somewhere again, throwing over the shoulder,
Going into the purple plains: The house is picked up
And pirouetting on to the witch,
And I have drunken the last dropp of rum
Before I’ve gone and stolen Mark Twain again from the
Library- The better futures of more illiterate men,
The exhuming from such basements,
The putting away of video games and pulp fantasy,
And the picking up of the plough,
Another trick,
In my hand, this dripping foreplay nobody
Reads: I can’t barely spell,
But my woman is so beautiful,
And now I know I’ll be there to catch her
As we fall.