The Endless Shell Rock Road Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If my body is cold,
It is because my rum bottle is empty;
And my girls have gone shopping:
Maybe there are still airplanes leaping like the last
Wonders the fireworks have to give,
With their captains of patriotism, and their
Many other though similar things:
And there are seas on either side of me, because
This is my America, just like both of my muses,
Slumbering, busy off of selling their liquors:
Worn out like beautiful dolls hung up in the sugar
Canes,
Hung up to open the eyes of liberated black men to
The work of their crooked knifes:
But I can only think of the sky right now, rosy as shells
Turning the colors of swing sets so pink and wet
As to be good enough to be her legs,
A girl I used to love in elementary school who has changed
Her names,
Returning to me like a letter taped to a dove,
Wanting to tame her and move her closer into the suburbias
Caracoling high school I used to run away into
And masturbate, while she is something more feral with
The attention span of a blue eyed egret:
She will fly away like stewardesses in the penumbra of
Seizuring debutants:
But you will never come, after smelling the dirt tilled from
My wrist by the fangs of defeated serpents,
You will fall back into the anonymous six pack of another
Fireman,
And your big eyes will engorge and frighten your children,
And your leggy and marvelous carnival will move a little
Further,
Further down the endless shell rock road.